The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

Let's get a couple of things out of the way. The Avengers opens on such a hollow note that its entire first act struggles to find any kind of footing at all. Trapped between a need for some basic exposition and a total disregard for anyone foolish enough to wade into this film without having seen its multiple-franchise foundations, The Avengers thus has nothing for anyone as it slowly, ever so slowly, brings together its collection of superheroes. And though I've never previously bought the charge that Joss Whedon is a smug writer, I nearly blushed at the self-satisfaction in some early exchanges and setups, so obvious and fan-massaging that their cynicism threatened to divorce me entirely from what I hoped would be Whedon's big break. Maybe all that trash-talking he'd done over the years for those who "misread" or "mishandled" his early film scripts was just a smokescreen for a writer whose considerable gift for television writing simply didn't translate to the more concise storytelling of cinema.

Then, something happened that has not occurred in any of the Marvel films leading up to this blowout: the movie kept getting better. Most of the previous films started with intriguing concepts and approaches before fizzling out in half-baked, perfunctorily executed action romps that served only to set up the chess pieces for this picture. Even Captain America, easily the best of the Marvel Studios franchise starters, dipped a bit in the middle, though it differs from its peers in that it finished strong where movies like Iron Man, Thor and The Incredible Hulk ended on lame notes. But The Avengers swaps the usual Marvel dynamic, moving out of a dull, lazy setup into something clever, well-observed and, ultimately, thrilling. By the time everything fell into place, my laundry list of complaints evaporated in the pure rush of Whedon's ambition.

Iron Man 2

Two years ago, Iron Man became one of the few films with a budget over $100 million that might conceivably be called a "surprise hit." What was most surprising about it is how it pleased damn near everyone -- including this writer -- with barely anything to its credit. It lacked spectacle, had a more difficult time following up on its themes than The Dark Knight and managed to stretch the relatively short origin story of Tony Stark into two hours of one man riffing while something important seemed to be about to happen but never did. Luckily for Jon Favreau and Marvel, that man was Robert Downey Jr.

I have expressed and will continue to express bottomless derision toward the current trend in Hollywood of dancing around weak screenwriting by filtering it through a faux-postmodern prism, retaining all the bad elements but acting as if they are excusable because the writer knows they suck. However, if anyone can force that current of open lethargy into something entertaining, it's Downey. A more captivating and ingratiating sonuvabitch you'll never meet; Downey always has an air about him that suggests he hates the material, regardless of quality, more than the most dismissive Internet troll ever could, yet he routinely makes good films better and weaker ones memorable. On the rare occasion that he plays a character whose excesses build beyond his control, as he did early in his career in Less Than Zero and recently in Zodiac, the actor can be an emotionally devastating specter of a fallen man.

The first Iron Man never called for that side of Downey's acting prowess and contented itself simply with unleashing his smarmy detachment upon the world in a glorious burst of one-liners that made the film the best comedy of the summer to make up for its often tedious structure. Its sequel, however, could have benefited from a moment or two of reflection, when Downey's facade remains but cracks irreparably to show the raging fear and loathing within. Instead, it chooses to cut off its fleeting severity with comic relief, if not a desperate cut to another location as if literally running away from context. Iron Man 2 suggests that the power source Tony Stark built to save his life might actually be killing him in another way, and Stark's main course of action is to just cover this up from everyone to appear strong, a fitting metaphor for a film that attempts to posit every stereotypically "American" cinematic value through its obscenely wealthy businessman-hero.

Yes, it's going to be that kind of a review, but, in fairness, the Iron Man series is currently the most openly political comic book film franchise to hit theaters. Its hero found his calling after being kidnapped by Arab insurgents and discovering that the weapons his company designed passed into enemy hands. This brought about a personal epiphany and a question about the possibility of only supplying one party in a modern, global network, which was almost immediately discarded to reconstitute the film as nothing more than a contrast between a grating but moral businessman and the evil, greedy corporate weasel who actively sold products to America's enemies. Stark defeated this man and went straight to a hearing where he brazenly revealed his secret identity to the world.

Iron Man 2 picks up right where its predecessor left off, and the best that can be said for this turn of events is that the film does at last give us a comic book hero who not only doesn't doubt his powers or capacity when the sequel comes around; rather, he's so psyched that he tells everyone. Perhaps if Favreau had followed that line, a truly original one in the over-exposed yet still young and potential-filled field of comic book movies, Iron Man 2 might have made for interesting and fresh viewing. But the political aspect returns, introducing bigger issues yet somehow compressing them into even broader oversimplifications.

"I have successfully privatized world peace," he crows in a Senate committee hearing on the ownership of the Iron Man suit, a statement that horrifically elicits wild cheering from the crowd as Stark's chief critic, Senator Stern (Garry Shandling) is reduced to openly swearing in impotent rage at his nemesis. One sympathizes; the brash and arrogant Tony Stark that made for such a cheeky twist in the first film is gone, replaced by a whirling maelstrom of narcissism. Stark's self-love has morphed into outright solipsism, forcing the audience to follow around a character who does not want us to identify with him, who would not even let us wax one of the many cars he rarely drives.

With his pencil-thin mustache, hands-on approach to his inventions, rampant womanizing and erratic behavior terms "eccentricity" due to personal wealth and social standing, Tony Stark is most clearly modeled upon infamous playboy/basket case Howard Hughes, who also defied governmental authority and got away with it because of his wealth. But Hughes, despicable and hateful little man that he was, has an air of tragedy that Tony lacks.

Perhaps that's just a result of the times changing. Hughes' tics and obsessions would raise eyebrows today, but a half-century ago they were outlandishly scandalous. Stark, on the other hand, enjoys a world filled with vacuous, flash-hungry millennials so inundated with Internet gossip and so dumbed-down by, well, movies like this that the cocky antics of this incorrigible billionaire are perceived as cool. "Blow something up!" yells one young man from the nether-region of off-screen ADR when Tony makes a grandiose entry to an expo in the suit, the man in question having clearly fallen for Iron Man during some filmed raid of a Middle Eastern locale. For these fictional people, the act of seeing something on video instantly renders it entertainment in the same way our own intermittent carpet-bombing of Baghdad across the decades looks like a video game.

In this sense, Iron Man 2 offers the audience a strange opportunity to watch itself watching the film, a potentially metaphysical commentary on the nature of blockbusters in altering our sensitivity to violence and our acceptance of those "Amurican" values of isolationism as strident individualism and physical strength (this theory is inherently flawed, however, when you factor in Stark's hyper-intelligence and the opposition with which the people who most ardently embrace such hawkish nonsense as patriotism typically view the highly educated). I say "potentially," of course, because Favreau wants nothing less than to follow up on these sociopolitical tendrils, clearly willing as he is to present them so nakedly.

And so, Tony is permitted to live his life of staggering hypocrisy, cutting weapons development from Stark Industries (which existed almost exclusively to make weapons) while keeping the most advanced and dangerous weapon, whether he admits it's one or not, in the world for himself. When someone like Senator Stern, who is left without party affiliation, points this out, he is shamed not only within the film by Stark and his blinding (perhaps literally, given what he can get away with) charisma but outside of it by the director, who films Shandling in so unflattering a light you'll wish he'd directed that episode of The Larry Sanders Show he guested on, if not all of them. As it happened in the far more abhorrent -- aesthetically, structurally and morally -- Transformers 2, the sole voice of reason is presented as a nasally, pernicious genital wart, a bureaucratic farce who has the audacity to stand in the way between us and shit getting blown up. What an asshole.

Fine, so Jon Favreau maybe isn't the person to iron out (get it?) the political implications of Iron Man, though perhaps they should find someone who is since the hero is a conflicted weapons dealer and that brings with it political ramifications. But let's stop beating this horse for a while when so many more horses have been generously donated by Stark Industries for glue production. Perhaps I should get into the plot soon.

Oh, but that'll just make me angrier. Iron Man 2 pairs Tony against Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), who builds his own arc reactor from blueprints his father made when he was the partner of Tony's father, Howard. Justin Theroux reworked Ivan and his father, Anton, from Anton's roots in the comics as the Crimson Dynamo into a much more inherently interesting story. Whiplash, originally a Stark employee turned rogue, is now the son of the scientist Tony's father had deported and discredited, giving him a link to the hero that could prove fruitful. Further, the two make for terrific foils: both are the sons of scientific geniuses, partners even. Both of those fathers were emotionally distant, Howard from his work (which, as we learn, was more far-reaching than his son ever knew) and Anton from his alcoholic bitterness; the difference, of course, is that Tony grew up in the lap of luxury while Ivan must get by with DIY experiments.

That too, flies out the window as quickly it appears, leaving Rourke to indulge his wackiest indulgences, chief among them a strange relationship with a parakeet. Supposedly he caused so much stress in production that Favreau changed the film to bar Rourke from returning in a future installment, but perhaps the actor just got bored with having to sit around all day to drawl his 12 lines in a thick Russian accent. You might go a little stir-crazy too.

He's lucky to have any lines at all, though, considering just how much they managed to somehow cram more words into Downey's mouth. Much as the limp-fisted political content riles, it cannot compare to Iron Man 2's crucial flaw: too much of a good thing. Downey spit out self-aggrandizing lines at a blinding pace in the first film, and the one-liners fly so fast here that most are lost in the shuffle. He and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, who looks so confused and frustrated by how quickly everything is moving you almost pity her) lock themselves into so many overlapping arguments that Altman might be invoked had the layered dialogue been remotely understandable or there for any reason other than to stuff in as many jokes as possible. As I watched Iron Man 2, I thought less of The Dark Knight, which for all its flaws is certainly still the best comic book film, and more of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels. Both franchises feature an offbeat actor playing a part practically created for him, allowing for a high-comic symbiosis that, in the case of the earlier film, made us forget we were watching a movie about a damn theme park attraction and, in Iron Man, effortlessly propelled a film without much narrative thrust. But but franchises oversold their hot ticket with the successors, now actively trying to capture what had just been a harmonic tuning until the quirky-but-natural performances feel processed and forced.

Pepper gets a storyline of her own as Tony's pick as replacement for CEO of Stark Industries, though we only get to see her when she edges into Tony's periphery, when she's spending more time still running PR for Tony than running the business she was so happy to inherit. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) also shows up to discuss S.H.I.E.L.D. operations with Tony, and a new assistant named Natalie (Scarlett Johansson) factors into Tony's life as well. These are all tiny threads in a tapestry that was never woven together, taking away time from Tony's conundrum with his arc reactor, his conflict with Whiplash and his ongoing debate with the United States government while never progressing on their own terms. Like just about every other sequel, Iron Man 2 simply decides to be bigger without being better, barely leaving time for any action scenes and spending more time ogling computer-animated images of how computers might one day...animate images than it does with any character.

Surprisingly, the worst element of the film, rival weapons dealer Justin Hammer, is actually the most enjoyable, thanks to a giddy performance by Sam Rockwell. To make Tony Stark look well-adjusted, they had to turn Hammer into a joke of a character, a sniveling incompetent who receives government funding when Stark drops out of the weapons game -- and why isn't military-industrial collusion a focus of any amount of concern in these films? But Rockwell owns the part, parlaying the greasy charm he brings to his vilest characters into a faux-suave schmoozer who can barely keep ahead of his own uselessness as an inventor. His interplay with Rourke, all motor-mouthed schmoozing and awkward capitulation in the face of Ivan's tacit stonewalling, is hilarious, and possibly not at all faked if Rockwell and the others had to contend with Rourke's infamous preening and petulance.

Indeed, I almost, almost, want to give Iron Man 2 a pass simply because it raises the mainstream profile of three of my favorite living actors. It cements the "don't call them comebacks" of Rourke and Downey and offers Sam Rockwell his most visible job yet, perhaps paving the way for him to unleash the talent he's been refining just off the beaten path for a few years now in works like Snow Angels, Choke and Moon upon the mainstream world. Even Lt. Col. James Rhodes gets an upgrade, replacing Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle over money hassles.

And yet, no one has enough time to make a real impression, except Downey, who frankly has too much. Even if they did, they could never fully distract from the film's glaring weaknesses. If the first Iron Man managed to work without a propulsive plot, its sequel introduces so many storylines that it never moves into the action extravaganza it thinks it is. That's actually the most fascinating trait of these films: both times this franchise has tricked people into this its spare moments of action somehow fill most of the film's length, even though more time is spent on the advanced computers in Stark's home than with the Iron Man in battle. This deception remains a curious psych-out that could possibly save studios a great deal of money on their blockbusters if anyone could work out how Favreau pulls it off, if he is even consciously aware of the effect at all. But with the Stark levels constantly in the red, the lack of releasing spectacle is more evident here, and Iron Man 2 often wobbles between its belief in its own cool and the reality of its inaction. Frankly, I knew I was in trouble when Tony's first action in the film, flying ostentatiously into a stadium as fireworks explode and barely-dressed women dance around him, only to then immediately launch into a speech about changing the way the world gets energy. That's like setting off Roman Candles before you make a goddamn time share pitch. In that one ludicrous moment is the whole film: an idiotic distraction that wants to flirt with seriousness but has commitment issues.

I cannot say that Iron Man 2 is everything wrong with mainstream American cinema and our self-perception, not with Transformers 2 bumbling around the universe. It lacks the overt racism of Bay's disaster (and, truth be told, the first Iron Man, with its pathetic scenes of wish-fulfillment concerning the War on Terror), as well as the sexism, fashioning Natalie Rushman into a capable, strong fighter and letting Pepper be reasonable without being lambasted for it the way Stern is. Too, Favreau's direction is not quite sterling, but he has a better sense of staging than Michael Bay; aesthetically, Iron Man 2 is at worst passively unengaging, while Bay's style is far more offensively gauche and incompetent.

Yet the film still puts forward in laziness and unexplored themes what Transformers 2 actively advocated in its jingoistic ejaculation. Stark, already modeled for a past mogul, is an open throwback to '80s-era business excess, a time when corporate corruption was no less abhorrent but at least had a popular face under the condoned, even lauded hedonism of the wealthy under Reagan. We are made to believe that Tony, who does not wish to answer to the federal government but displays lip-service loyalty to America, to be the unequivocally "good" guy while people like Obadiah Stane and Justin Hammer, who will take their products where there is profit to be made, as evil. Both sides are ludicrously rich and filled with a sense of entitlement, but an outdated sense of patriotism absolves Tony. Yet one cannot look at the hypocritical vilification of Hammer or Stane without thinking of some of the current doublespeak involving Big Business by those beholden to it, the most recent example being the fiasco in the Gulf. Harebrained opportunists like Sarah Palin use the incident to call for an end to foreign oil, ignoring (or ignorant of) the impossibility of "domestic oil" when a company like, you know, British Petroleum is the one sucking up the black gold from our waters and land. Hammer and Stane should represent the insidiousness of globalization in relation to corporate crime and lawlessness, but instead they get to be easy targets that represent "bad business" while Tony gets to be the Reaganite star child without full reproach. For God's sake, the villain is even Russian, a nationality once again becoming our cinematic enemies either out of fear of Islamist reprisal or the continued desire to just return to simpler times when we just had to worry about a thermonuclear device instantly vaporizing us instead of all this car-bomb suspicion.

I certainly don't think, of course, that Favreau is intentionally putting forward this haltingly pro-unchecked capitalist (so long as those capitalists use some of their wealth to buy American flags) sentiment, but there's no way he didn't acknowledge some of the glaring political content, considering how much he undercuts personal insight to call more attention to senators and corrupt businessmen. What he is most guilty of is the same laziness the rest of America feels toward our current crisis: no one wants to fix the problem, only to return to a time when the problem wasn't noticeable.

We'd still like to thumb our noses at the problem though, and Iron Man 2 comes with a smugness common to the state of public perception at the moment, in which everyone would like to look down on everything, preferably without having to do anything so inconvenient as "research" or "reading." The film apathetically taps into our hatred of politicians, condescension and latently xenophobic rejection of downtrodden foreigners and our desire to continue the worship of money after its high priests have been exposed as rapacious, fraudulent thieves. Ultimately, Iron Man 2 wants nothing more than to turn us into that guy in the crowd, placed in the middle of an expo promoting technological advancement and the possibilities of scientific growth in a country that has vilified the educated and the fact-based in praise of the blinded faithful, unable to think of anything other than how cool it would be to see something blow up.

GoodFellas

If the Godfather films used organized crime as a personification of the corruption of the American society and dream, Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas never rises out of the surface level, not because it is shallow but because it gets itself in too deep. Who can stop to think of the poetry of illegality and how it represents the truth ethos of American law and organization when you're too busy looking over your shoulder for the guy who's gonna whack you? Michael Corleone would sympathize, but only in his twilight: "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me right back in," he once said. The gangsters of GoodFellas do not even have the luxury of dreaming of escape.

Of course, to call the crime that occurs in GoodFellas "organized" would be generous. It charts the street level thugs, not the consiglieres and dons who buy casinos and bribe senators; the few visible higher-ups who manage to stand out above the rest never involve themselves in anything more substantive than the local rackets. What's interesting of Scorsese's eye-level document of gangster life is how the lower-level soldiers and minor bosses, when separated from those no higher than a caporegime, think of themselves as kings, even when they report to practically everyone. Hell, most of them aren't even made men.

A young Henry Hill (Ray Liotta as an adult) only noticed the swagger, though. "All my life I wanted to be a gangster," he tells us over a scene of horrific brutality that precedes a flashback, and the irony of the placement of that declaration dissipates in the face of Henry's childhood memories. A half-Irish, half-Sicilian brat with no future, Henry looks out across the street to members of the Lucchese Family and sees only idols. All they do is run stolen goods, but they have tons of cash and total respect, something that the kid values more than anything an education might get him. So, he starts to work for the wiseguys, which his parents enjoy until the father realizes what he really does.

Young Henry goes from an unremarkable, pre-gray-flannel-suit American teen to one of those low-ranking kings. He is made to park the wiseguys' Cadillacs and hock crates of beer and stolen cartons of cigarettes, yet the neighborhood kids carry his mother's groceries, and thugs intimidate the postman who delivers Henry's mail in order to stop him handing letters from school officials and truant officers to Henry's father. Of course, Henry's dad seems to react so angrily to his son skipping school not because he wants the boy to get a proper education but because he does not like the idea of his son gaining more clout than him.

GoodFellas opens with the old "Based on a true story" chestnut that usually announces a series of half-truths and whole lies. That's true of this film, too, but among the many delights of GoodFellas is the balance between some of Scorsese's most straight-faced and "realistic" direction and his usual fanciful interpretation. The script itself mainly served as a transcription of improvisations the actors performed in rehearsal, so much of the dialogue of this true story comes from the actors. That first scene, taken from the sequence that would bridge the first and second halves later in the film, casts the three main wiseguys -- Henry, Jimmy (Robert De Niro) and Tommy (Joe Pesci) -- in the Expressionistic red of the brake lights interspersed with blinding white bursts as Tommy shoots the half-dead man in Henry's trunk, reveals how Scorsese's aesthetic certainly doesn't stick to documentary-like verité either.

But the use of both subjective direction and improvised acting makes GoodFellas feel so real. The camera draws us into this world, while the increasingly panicked and paranoid mannerisms of the actors, even if they're speaking their own lines and not those of the real-life mafiosos and wives they play, give the audience a fly-on-the-wall perspective that more coldly scripted lines would have precluded. As a young adult, Henry walks through a night club, and the camera takes his POV as it glides through the place as wiseguys, these old and powerful men, turn and address Henry (and the camera, and therefore us) and greet him as an equal. The effect nearly drowns out Henry's narration, speaking volumes of the allure of what Scorsese always paints in a negative light even as he allows us to empathize. Violence permeates GoodFellas, even more so than Scorsese's preceding films, and the great triumph of the director's work here is the manner with which he can play it so broadly that it's often comedic even as the sadistic, lawless brutality constantly undercuts Henry's nostalgic view of his gangster life.

Occasionally, GoodFellas practically intoxicates the viewer with its hints of power. When Henry takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco, the film's sole weak link) on their first true date, Scorsese employs a tracking shot that manages even to shame the previous one. After all, the first tracking shot showed us why Henry loved Family life, but he'd also already become used to it; the second tacitly assumes Karen's perspective as she watches this punky, self-absorbed 21-year-old transform into a deity. He practically changes the properties of the microcosm of the club: he parts the entry line to get in through the side door, walks calmly and amicably through the kitchen where patrons cannot enter, a chair "materializes" in the packed restaurant for Henry and his date, and much older people buy Henry free wine out of respect. Scorsese has to end the shot with a pan to a shitty, hackneyed comic just to remind us that this isn't someone's wonderful dream.

Karen's embrace of Henry, aroused as she is by his violent reprisal for a groping neighbor and his flashy wealth and power, shows how even the routinely abused women in this underworld cannot consider another life once they've had a taste. Sure, you have to pay your respects and, most importantly, "keep your mouth shut," but a wiseguy only has to obey the wiseguys' rules, not society's. As such, the insanity of gangster life often plays as comedy so grandiose it might have fit in the silent age were it not so rooted in dialogue. Tommy, attempting to woo a Jewish woman, displays the typical solipsism of the gangsters when he unironically chuckles, "I can't believe this. A Jew broad prejudiced against Italians!" Scorsese then juxtaposes, despite their lengthy time apart, scenes of Karen's Jewish mother and Tommy's Sicilian mom to demonstrate how the two are practically carbon copies for all the ethnic hand-wringing of both the Jews and Italians who constantly insult each other. Tommy in general walks the line between lunacy and dark comedy, his emotional rollercoaster so wild it sweeps up all those in his company: in perhaps the film's most quoted scene, Tommy has a dinner party in stitches before suddenly turning into a cold and intimidating killer when Henry remarks how funny the hothead is. "Funny like I'm a clown? I amuse you?" he hisses, until he finally reveals that he's kidding and people laugh even harder. That's Tommy for you: he can cow everyone in fear or win their love, often with only the briefest separation between the two.

The most absurd comedy, though, reveals just how powerful even these low-level guys are. "Nobody goes to jail unless they want to," Henry tells Karen, and when he is later pinched, he has his driver take him to jail as if going for a meeting. He might as well be, as he and the other incarcerated gangsters live as though nothing changed; they even get access to a kitchen to cook hearty Italian meals. There's no place that the wiseguys cannot make more comfortable. As the film continues, however, the humor and irony of this infiltration reveals its double edge: it also means that there's no place to hide.

Henry is, after all, placed in the center of two men who will lead him to the same destruction, albeit in diametrically opposed paths. Tommy, the white-hot nova packed into Pesci's small frame, is the embodiment of the childish freedom allotted to these gangsters: free to berate, beat, even kill practically anyone who sparks his short temper, Tommy is the unglamorous portrait of what happens when a person is not held accountable (and, when he eventually is, of the stark horror of mob "justice"). Jimmy, on the other hand, is more measured and calculating. Along with caporegime Paulie (Paul Sorveno), Jimmy is one of the few truly organized members of the demonstrated organized crimes. Though violent and ruthless, he carries himself with a more professional and typically calm attitude. He orchestrates the Lufthansa heist, at the time the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil. In the aftermath, however, Jimmy slowly devolves. As the other criminals immediately advertise their guilt by spending their cuts on expensive, noticeable purchases like cars and mink coats, Jimmy takes drastic measures to protect himself, gradually eliminating almost everyone connected to the heist. In the film's best sequence, perfectly set to the ending strains of Derek & the Dominoes' "Layla," Scorsese's camera glides over images of bodies stowed in cars, dumpsters and even a meat wagon to show where all roads lead in the goodfellas' world.

Jimmy's own descent into paranoia prefigures the intensified final act, in which Henry, made rich but also addicted by selling coke, falls apart in an amphetamine haze. Living in a house that makes Dirk Diggler's pad look tasteful by comparison, Henry practically gives himself to the cops, who track him by helicopter in a funny sequence where Henry constantly makes his companions look for the helicopter to prove he's not crazy. Both he and Karen lose their minds as police raid the house and arrest Henry, as he fears Paulie's wrath while Karen comes to dread Jimmy, who himself frets that Henry will rat on him. Their entire world is based on keeping quiet, but they all live such ostentatious lives that they don't need to speak to give themselves away.

At last, the house of cards finally comes tumbling down. "Being together all the time made everything seem so normal," Karen tells us much earlier in the film; the close-knit nature of family and Family life only further enhances their feelings of superiority and separation from the rest of society. But society eventually breaks up this loose community, and we see how shaky the ties that bind really are, jiggled loose as they are in the frenzy of cocaine-induced hysteria. By this point we're entirely inside Henry's mind, which is probably why Scorsese then chooses to harshly expel us from it. Perhaps because memory of Taxi Driver's controversy (or the more recent hullabaloo over The Last Temptation of Christ) hung over his head, the director does not finish the film in harmonic subjectivity. Instead, Henry stops in the middle of testifying before entering the Witness Relocation Program to rail directly at the audience, who largely complained about this ending. It's understandable, as it shows a man, even in defeat, so arrogant that he turns on the people he invited to listen to his tale. By breaking the engagement of his own story, Henry uses his last bit of screentime to impart one last reminder that he, and those like him, is nothing more than a cocky jerk, and no amount of short-lived power can disguise what a pathetic and aggravating man he is.

True Romance

I've mentioned the sad Weinstein spiral elsewhere, but certain films remind me of what a potent force they used to be. When they headed Miramax, they displayed a formidable ability to pluck the hottest unproven talent from the Sundance pool, pair them up with established heavy-hitters, then sit back and let the magic happen. Perhaps the greatest example of this is Good Will Hunting, in which then-unknowns Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (who'd both had acting work but nothing to launch them) wrote and acted under the direction of indie legend Gus Van Sant to great effect and critical acclaim. My personal favorite, however, the closest meeting of the minds, came when Quentin Tarantino, hot off the success of Reservoir Dogs, sold a script to hyperkinetic madman Tony Scott. It was a match made in B-movie heaven.

True Romance, Tarantino's take on romantic comedy, received positive, if muted, response upon its release: critics praised its visceral style and unrelenting bizzaro love tale, but criticized it for the same reasons. Scott and Tarantino later put out a director's cut infinitesimally longer, with only a few scenes placed back in or lengthened just long enough to show more blood, but the added schlock actually fleshes out the picture a bit, giving more time to minor characters (all of whom are played by some mighy familiar faces). What you're left with is a film by two craftsmen perfect for each other, yet just different enough to temper the weaknesses of the other.

Tarantino's dialogue overflows as it flies from the mouth of Clarence Worley (Christian Slater), an Elvis obsessive who is on his way to the art-house theater for a kung-fu marathon on his birthday at the start of the film. He tries to chat up a chick in a bar into coming with him, but she declines. Clarence takes it in stride, and he appears only slightly fazes by the rejection. Then firecracker named Alabama (Patricia Arquette) sits next to him in the theater and asks him to catch her up. Soon, they're sharing pie in a diner and they go back to his place. Alabama runs out afterward, and she admits that she's a call girl (not a prostitute, she says) hired by his boss to show the introvert a good time. Clarence continues to prove an unflappable character, and even admits he figured it was all too good to be true. A twist: Alabama falls for this dope's sweetness, and they quickly elope.

OK, so it's a bit weird, but there's nothing that different from Pretty Woman, albeit knocked down a number of rungs on the social ladder. Then it all goes mad. Clarence tracks down Alabama's pimp, Drexyl, to inform him that Alabama will no longer be in his employ, which naturally ends in violence. Now on the run carrying a sack full of Drexyl's uncut cocaine, Clarence and Alabama try to unload the drugs to provide them with enough money to get away while staying ahead of both the cops and the mafia who funneled their drugs through the pimp.

Slater and Arquette, not normally scene-stealers, prove entirely capable of carrying this film, as you believe their warped but (as the title says) true love. The sweet, milquetoast Clarence can turn on a dime and become a truly intimidating character when someone threatens his beloved, while Alabama, sadly under-developed even in the longer cut, also has a darker side that bubbles to the surface without feeling forced. Both give the finest performances of their careers, and I can't see anyone else pulling their roles off half as well.

Aiding the two is a non-stop cavalcade of fantastic supporting appearances from stars both established and rising. Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper appear in a scene as a mob boss torturing Clarence's father, and their conversation, dubbed "the Sicilian scene" is Tarantino's second best chunk of dialogue following Jules' final speech to "Ringo" in Pulp Fiction. Tarantino received some (possibly justified) flak for what was perceived as unnecessary racist exchanges in Pulp Fiction (i.e. "Dead N-word storage"), but in this scene the writer displays a remarkably sly grasp of racism and how people can be driven by it. Clifford knows that the mobster bases his identity on his Italian heritage, and he also knows that he cannot withstand the torture and will unwilling divulge his son's location. So, he uses his final moments to regale Cocccotti with Sicily's history, specifically that the Moors (Africans) invaded Italy hundreds of years ago and "they changed the bloodline forever." The scene gently crescendoes until Clifford sardonically says that the Sicilians are "part eggplant." Coccotti laughs and engages in the usual "gedda look at this kid" mafioso cheek-pinching before suddenly pulling his gun and shooting Cliff dead. "I haven't killed anybody," Walken hisses, "since 1984." Never does this scene insist upon itself or play its hand too soon, and only at the end do we realize that this was Cliff's plan all along.

Walken and Hopper aren't the only memorable side-players, however; no, True Romance, as with Tarantino's best work, is ultimately an ensemble piece. Gary Oldman pours all of his off-kilter magnetism into Drexyl, the dreadlocked, gold-toothed pimp with such golden lines as "It ain't white boy day, is it?" Years before Tony Soprano thrust him into the spotlight, James Gandolfini plays a ruthless mob thug who "interrogates" Alabama, while Brad Pitt, still an actor of little note, absolutely walks away with the picture as the stoner roommate of Clarence's actor friend Dick (Michael Rapaport). His delivery of the line "Don't condescend to me, man" is as memorable as anything else he's ever done.

These loopy, minutiae-obsessed characters are kept interesting because Scott makes sure to throw in some gloriously overdone violence every now and then to keep people from getting to talky. Likewise, Tarantino's loquaciousness and attention to character gives the film actual roots that tether Scott's frantic style to some form of reality (though you could hardly call anything that happens in the film "realistic"). The various shootouts are all grisly and visceral, but the also carry some emotional weight thanks not only to the writing but Hans Zimmer's ethereal, subtly haunting score. His compositions are airy and light, as if recorded on wind chimes, and they have a disturbing tranquility when played over the shocking violence that underscores both the warped fairy tale nature of the screenplay as well as the general demented state of the action.

I read that someone recently re-edited the film to follow Tarantino's script, which offered up a more fleshed-out Alabama, a larger part for Samuel L. Jackson's virtually non-existent cameo and a non-linear narrative structured like Pulp Fiction. While the idea of seeing a more defined Alabama intrigues me, I highly doubt that the cut, which uses deleted scenes with noticeably less post-production refinement, will improve upon this. Though unquestionably a better filmmaker, Tarantino benefits somewhat from another hand guiding his project, and a slew of brief but commanding appearances, bolstered by the impressive performances from its leads, makes True Romance the most bewilderingly touching gonzo romance ever filmed.

Soul Men

There is an underlying sadness to “Soul Men.” As you watch it, you can’t help but think of it as a foul-mouthed but loving eulogy, the only way to send off a comedian. In fact, the plot itself seems eerily tailor-made to conjure up this connection; two estranged bandmates reunite to perform at a tribute for their deceased frontman. Unfortunately, the film never seems to move beyond the initial phase.

Louis Hinds (Samuel L. Jackson) and Floyd Henderson (Bernie Mac) were the backup singers of soul and funk legends The Real Deal before the usual load of drugs, women, and “creative differences” tore them apart. While their former leader Marcus Hooks (played in flashbacks by John Legend) enjoyed decades of fruitful solo successes, Floyd and Louis stagnated; Floyd started up a car wash, while Louis turned to theft to get by. Following Marcus’ death, a sleazy record producer (Sean Hayes) sees money to be made and organizes a reunion of the two surviving members.

After convincing Louis with the promise of money, Floyd throws his mate in the car and the pair head for the Apollo. Along the way they play a few gigs in bars to get back into the groove, pick up a few groupies, and duke it out over the memory of Odetta, a woman they both loved.

At a certain point, the two travel to Odetta’s home and discover her daughter who may or may not be Floyd’s child. Cleo (Sharon Leaf) joins them for arbitrary reasons, and soon the question of her fatherhood must be answered. Oh and she can sing her heart out, so she becomes their backup singer. Yes, the backup singers recruited a backup singer of their own.

Band reunion clichés not withstanding, what really makes this film dull is its terrible over-reliance on stereotypes. Cleo’s boyfriend is an abusive, illiterate, drug-peddling wannabe rapper, the two characters representing the record company are Jewish, and both represent a separate Jewish stereotype: the executive is money-grubbing and manipulative, while the intern sports a ‘fro and feels some sort of bond with the two black men. He also doubles as a desperate Jonah Hill look-alike, only without the wit.

Bernie Mac is typecast as a smooth talker who manages to get people to go along with his plans no matter how many times they see he’s just full of hot air, and Jackson- well, Jackson transcends typecasting. Is it possible to be your own stereotype?

The first two acts are promising, but never move past a sea of stereotypical jokes. But it is in the final third that the film goes terribly wrong. It essentially becomes a blaxploitation version of the Blues Brothers. An ex-con and his partner have to “get the band back together,” and somehow the cops get involved to the point that the whole country is after a pair of has-been musicians who nevertheless allow these musicians to play one last time. Really, the film mines so many stereotypes and rips off John Landis’ far superior movie so much that I’m amazed they didn’t call it “Blues Brothas” or something else equally as offensive to everyone.

“Soul Men” has all the components of a better movie: Mac, Jackson, the possibility for a scathing indictment of the record industry’s manipulation and greed. But it suffocates under the weight of its borderline racism and general unfunniness. All but a few minor jokes fail spectacularly, and the attempt at drama is the only truly funny thing in the movie. If you see the parallels between fiction and life, do not mistake them for poignancy; any message you could possibly glean from this will be one you brought in with you. During the credits an interview plays where Bernie Mac discusses how he prepared for roles and the seriousness with which he treated every one of them. It’s a simple, moving tribute that’s all the more tragic for being connected to this film.

Lakeview Terrace

In 1989, Spike Lee made “Do The Right Thing,” a frank, witty, yet ultimately sad and shocking portrait of racial tensions in New York City. So masterful was the film that any subsequent depiction of racism has inevitably been compared to it. This may seem unfair, but given how many movies use it as a guideline it’s somewhat appropriate. Such is the case with this initially promising thriller, which steals a number of devices from Lee’s opus but delivers a clunky, stereotypical product.

Starring Samuel L. Jackson and Patrick Wilson, “Lakeview Terrace” pits an interracial couple, Chris and Lisa (played by Wilson and Kerry Washington), against their police officer neighbor, Abel Turner (Jackson). Chris and Lisa move in next door, and Abel wastes no time making them feel unwelcome. Turner is every bit Hollywood’s idea of the non-stereotypical “urban” black man: he prays every morning, hates rap, and ensures that his children use proper grammar. It’s like they ran down a checklist of black stereotypes, and just did the opposite thinking it would make a fleshed-out character. He’s also astonishingly racist - he makes offensive statements at parties and has nothing but disgust on his face when he sees the next-door couple.

Turner makes a nice foil for Chris, the rap loving, easygoing Berkeley grad who must have trouble standing up straight with all the white liberal guilt on his shoulders like a politically correct Atlas. Whenever he tries to confront his new neighbor, he quickly backs down and walks away with his tail between his legs. Even when he says to his wife that black men constantly disapprove of his their relationship, he whispers it as if telling an offensive joke in a crowded restaurant. Eventually he fights back, and the story escalates into from the tense to the ridiculous.

Most of the film’s positive aspects can be attributed to Jackson. He has what physicians refer to as “the crazy eyes.” His facial expressions run the gamut of craziness: he’s insanely happy, insanely angry, insanely contemplative, insanely surprised (often with a tinge of insanely angry), and - this is the best one - insanely crazy. He’s the kind of person you’d never want to hear the words “good night” from because coming from him they give off the strong implication that morning isn’t coming. Even if Chris wasn’t such a spineless wuss I doubt he could possibly stare Abel down.

Neil LaBute, an accomplished writer and playwright renowned for creating stories about misogynistic men who slowly reveal their sadistic tendencies, directed the film, but you’d never know it. Had LaBute written the script, “Lakeview Terrace” might have gently unfolded, gradually mounting tension until you suddenly found yourself in a horrific situation.

For a time, this film is interesting; the first two acts let Chris and Abel’s little turf war escalate as a forest fire inches nearer (a blatant nod to “Do The Right Thing’s” heat wave), but the final 45 minutes are pure B-movie nonsense. Abel’s motivation for his racial hate is absurd and harkens back to a time when racism was socially acceptable rather than the subtler way it still exists. Some of the things he does to mess with the couple are just plain ridiculous; for instance, he mails a video of a clearly-struggling Chris unwittingly receiving a lap dance from a stripper at a bachelor party to Lisa, as if seeing her husband pinned to the ground by three cops and forced to let a stripper dance for him will lead to a divorce or even sow doubt. Once Jackson starts yelling things like “I’m the police! You have to do what I say!” it’s all over.

This film was probably doomed from the start. Even its trailer veered so close to camp I didn’t know when I went in whether I’d get a black comedy or a thriller. After seeing it, I still don’t. The idea of being terrorized by a cop is interesting, as is a study of modern racism. However, the script is constantly at odds with the director; LaBute wants to take his time and let the hatred simmer, while the script thinks it’s adding a twist to race study by making the black person racist instead of the white guy. It strives to be a thriller version of “Do The Right Thing,” but instead has all the heavy-handedness of the last big racial drama, “Crash.” It’s a bad dissection of race relations because everyone conforms to some sort of stereotype, and it’s a bad thriller because all the lines got big laughs from the audience I was in when they should have been gripping their seats.