Doctor Strange review

Marvel Studios is an anomaly of modern populist filmmaking. Based partly on the rules of comic book publications, serialized television and the producer-driven classical studio system, Kevin Feige and the other Marvel executives designed a fruitful model that spawns and nurtures multiple, converging franchises that can share and swap characters. They’ve also successfully introduced general, non-geek audiences to super-dorky pulp characters like Thor, Ant-Man, The Vision, the whole Guardians of the Galaxy team and now, their nerdiest character of all, Doctor Strange. The reason audiences continually eat this up is because of the studio’s steady oversight and a strict style-guide that keeps their films uniformed and consistent. In the case of Scott Derrickson’s “Doctor Strange” this same-ness, delivers an amiable blockbuster but stifles the possibilities for creative experimentation.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays our hero Doctor Steven Strange, a smug celebrity neurosurgeon who’s looking to execute a complicated procedure that will further elevate his status. Amid this pursuit, Strange is seriously injured in a car-accident that leaves his hands unable to perform with precision. As he travels the world looking for a miracle surgery that will allow him to work again, he discovers a house of mystics in Katmandu that promise to show him ways to heal himself through the use of magic and sorcery. Strange is then caught up in a secret war between the temple’s Sorcerer Supreme (Tilda Swinton) and a band of rogue magicians, led by a disgruntled student of the dark-arts named Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) who’s hell-bent on bringing an evil entity upon the earth.

Derrickson’s history in horror filmmaking (“Sinister,” “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” “Deliver Us From Evil”) could have easily gone hand in hand with the occult-leanings of the Marvel’s magician hero. Instead of punching his way to victory or blowing up his opponents with wrist-rockets, Doctor Strange uses his intellect and skills as a sorcerer to defeat other-worldly foes. Yet, what we are given in this movie is another standard superhero origin story about a reluctant hero who must overcome his own hubris for the good of man-kind. Many beats of the plot repeat what we’ve recently seen in “Iron Man,” “Thor” and “Ant-Man,” and the shiny, non-threatening tone of Marvel’s happy-meal presentation disguises every genre cliché with lavish sets and complicated special effects.

 

The post-Matrix/post-Inception visuals and the film's art-direction is spectacular and eye-popping—particularly the set-pieces and fight-sequences that take place among the shifting and folding Escher-esq cityscapes—but they are placed almost randomly and with very little stakes within the story. Most of the screenplay consists of long sequences where Swinton’s Ancient One and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo explain to Cumberbatch all the ins and outs of mirror realms and astral projection and forbidden libraries and magic imbued weapons and so on and so on. To the credit of the screenwriters and the performances from the actors, this exposition-heavy dialogue is peppered with enough humor and whit to distract from its utilitarian function.

Aside from a slightly rushed plot and another stale Marvel-Studios villain with a weird face, “Doctor Strange” is perfectly entertaining and keeps true to the company brand, but it’s the very nature of this idiosyncratic character that begs for a less calculated approach. Given Derrickson’s past work and given the prestigious background of the cast, the movie’s familiar superhero trappings are more nakedly obvious and its getting increasingly harder to overlook Marvel’s unwillingness to challenge their formula.

Grade: B-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Doctor Strange."

The Imitation Game review

              As a classically presented movie’s-movie “The Imitation Game” is sufficiently, and perhaps superficially, entertaining. The actor’s performances are strong, the direction by Mortem Tyldum is confident, and the production design and attention to period detail is convincing enough to capture an audience’s attention. That said, as a historical document and as a year-end awards contender, the film fails to sell its ethos in a sincere or graceful manner.

            Benedict Cumberbatch plays Allen Turing, the underappreciated genius who was hired by the British government to lead a secret team of code-breakers during World War II. Having grown up with few points of commonality among his peers, Turing was forced to stifle his ego and his anti-social disposition to successfully work with other scientists and math magicians as they worked tireless nights figuring out how to crack the ciphered messages delivered between the Nazi soldiers. Complicating the issue, he was also a repressed and closeted homosexual, working for a government that criminalized his natural desires and collaborating with a team of jealous Alfa-males who challenge his masculinity –the latter issue being a contrived plot device that underlines the manipulation of Graham Moore’s  ‘Oscar winning’ screenplay.

            Mathew Good does his best to justify his character’s hokey archetype as Turing’s caddish colleague and Kiera Knightly fits comfortably into the film’s Weinstein-brand austerity as Joan Clark, the only female code-breaker who finds a unique kin-ship with Cumberbatch’s effortless outsider portrayal. Peripheral performances from Mark Strong and Charles Dance as the team’s impatient military superiors are also a welcomed addition, but this admirable ensemble only masks the film’s achingly generic and narratively unambitious screenplay.

              There’s also the issue of how Turing’s hidden sexuality is sheepishly handled, the film often bumbles its way through very specific identity struggles. At different points the character’s secret is compared to Clark’s plight as an underappreciated woman and later he’s accused of being a Russian communist spy because he refuses to share certain aspects of his life with his co-workers. These comparisons, while not all together ineffective as a script device or an easy short hand for a straight audience, are somewhat misjudged when considering the deeper emotional complexities that the film doesn't even bother to approach.

              Artificiality isn't all together a bad thing in cinema and if judged as an overblown movie-of-the-week style dramatization of important war history “The Imitation Game” safely delivers as a soft-thriller. The movie’s moral questions about how and when to conceal highly sensitive war-time intelligence and the depiction of the race to break the Nazi’s Enigma machine has a filmic immediacy that lacks from the melodrama that dominates most of the screen-time. Nevertheless, the film’s rush to one-liners and lazy characterizations spoil whatever authenticity we are supposed to glean from the story’s message about intolerance and social progress.

Grade: C+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/March-2015

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug review

               First of all, I want to say that as someone who has always struggled with his weight, I think it's great that Peter Jackson has been able to successfully shed much of his excess body mass and find ways to remain healthy and lean. I only wish that he could apply the same kind of discipline to his filmmaking. 3D, wicked-high frame-rates and motion capture have become his new indulgences and these technologies have apparently now taken precedent over coherent storytelling and character development.  

                As a fan—and sometimes defender—of Jackson’s ambitious Lord of the Rings trilogy, I’m at a loss at how the same man behind that behemoth of a juggling act, who, for three films, was able to keep all of his balls in the air at the same time, now can’t manage to competently tell a simple point-A to point-B plot.  I left last year’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” with the bare-minimum level of satisfaction and a heap of better-luck-next-time reservations.  Within “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”, despite spending its entire running time throwing CGI things at the camera, whatever story was set up in the first film has now been shoved aside for a two hour and forty minute, fantasy, tech-demo.

                The plot of this second installment—as it barely exists—continues to follow Bilbo (Martin Freeman) and his merry gang of dwarves, led by the brave but stubborn Thorin (Richard Armitage), as they make their way through the dangerous pockets of Middle Earth on the way to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim their home and treasure from a massive dragon named Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch).  On the way, they run into an army of Orks, racist wood elves, and a downtrodden fishing community, ruled by a corrupt master (Stephen Fry). 

                Seems modest enough, right? Well, added in, we also follow the wizard Gandolf (Sir Ian McKellan) as he is sneaking around caves and forests in search of a non-related prophecy, as well as a wooden will-they-or won’t-they, romantic strand dealing with Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and an arrow-wielding elf named Taurial (Evangeline Lilly).  All of these story bits, along with the main journey, struggle for air between a number of bloated, video-game action set-pieces. 

                Despite Jackson stretching this relatively short novel into three separate films by including side-mythology from Tolkien’s other writings, this movie couldn’t be less interested in the story.  Through most of the it the characters are bounced from one set-piece to another with hardly any narrative tissue holding them together.  There are far too many goofy names and magic scrolls and foretold something-or-others to keep up with, and the film’s complete inability to slow down and let the plot breath prevents any of these elements from progressing.  We don’t even have a particular interest in Bilbo’s involvement in the story anymore since the movie continually shifts the center of consciousness, digressing into uninteresting and irrelevant subplots and over designed and aggressively choreographed green-screen action sequences.

                What will inevitably trick audiences into thinking they got what they paid for is the fantastic, well-paced conclusion of the film, involving the dragon Smaug; a completely believable and awe-inspiring CGI creation that steals the entire show. Cumberbatch’s voice is used to good effect here and the scene, unlike the rest of the movie, is based in its characters and their interactions.

                Back in 2005 I would have never called “The Lord of the Rings” series subtle, but compared to these exponentially disappointing Hobbit prequels they now feel like Ken Burns documentaries.  Whereas those films knew how to use their long running-times to build brooding atmosphere and explore the different character dynamics, this movie just feels like being led on a track through a spook house, passing one visual thing after another, in way that seems arbitrary and inconsequential. 

Grade: D+

Originally published in The Idaho State Journal/Dec-2013