The following review contains spoilers. Proceed at your own risk.

With a title like Man of Steel, the latest superhero summer blockbuster to hit theaters, it’s clear director Zack Snyder wants us to understand the significance of that nickname. Sure, Superman, as he is rarely referred to in the latest adaptation, still dons his blue suit and red cape, but those jumping primary colors are dulled and washed out into a darker aesthetic and ethos. This version is a committed and dour reincarnation- meticulous both in its long storytelling and overbearing loud effects- more interested in the “steel” than the “man.”

Part of this heavier atmosphere derives from the screenplay by David S. Goyer based on the story he and co-producer Christopher Nolan wrote. The thematic and visual influence of Nolan, the famed Dark Knight trilogy director, is present throughout the film’s 143 minutes, filled with unnecessarily long pieces of action that seem only to serve Snyder’s lucid imagination. Unlike Bryan Singer’s 2006 light re-boot Superman Returns, this adaptation rekindles Clark Kent’s origin story through sporadic and consistent flashbacks to the Kansas cornfields, the slice of Americana that quickly and vividly becomes a playground for destruction. It also keeps the famed Kryptonian played by Brit Henry Cavill heavy and grave, making sure to descriptively retell his alien past and that infamous struggle to bridle or express his superhuman power.

The extended beginning to this voluminous work takes place on the imploding planet Krypton, where Jor-El (Russell Crowe), Kal-El’s (Superman’s) father, pleads with the high court to help its citizens flee from their erupting home after his wife illegally births her son organically (as opposed to the planet’s artificial, pre-destined growing fetuses). General Zod (A feisty Michael Shannon) leads a coup to attain the planet’s codex needed to escape but Jor-El prophesies its power and quickly sends his son to earth with it. His mother worries, but Jor-El reassures her that he will be a God amongst them.

This of course is a prophecy earned and not granted, especially under the watch of his adoptive father Jonathon and mother Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane). Our visions of Kal-El, now named Clark, jump from pre-pubescent tussles to various roaming jobs as a bartender and fisherman, but all environments sample his various life-saving, powerful feats. It’s his alien build however that worries his father, who preaches a morality based on turning one’s cheek and keeping his super qualities out of sight. Clark’s limits of exposure are tested to their extremes, realized in a disastrous tornado that beckons the frightful imagery from the recent midwestern disasters.

These often used and deftly handled memories are shot in a rustic, almost nostalgic raw quality but as we move towards conflict, Man of Steel separates into two distinct styles and its clear the second kind appeals much more to Snyder’s sensibilities. Credited with films like Watchmen and Sucker Punch, Snyder appears more concerned with form than content, with sci-fi action showboating than condensing its tedious testosterone-fueled combat. Its spectacle is grandiose but induces more cringes than bewildered gasps, whether situated in a small town’s Main Street or the imposing skyscrapers of Metropolis.

That’s where we meet Lois Lane (played fervently by Amy Adams), a severe ecological field reporter at the Daily Planet who stumbles upon Clark in the arctic, researching a glacier-embedded alien craft. Her story of this mysterious man and ship gain traction after Gen. Zod and his extra-terrestrial ship of warriors makes its presence known to the world requesting Kal-El, as he knows him, to turn himself in, or suffer destructive consequences. Lane ultimately becomes part of this ultimatum and even gains valuable insight from a vision of Jor-El. Unfortunately her fate as the romantic partner inevitably spurns Adams of a more integrative voice.

Cavill meanwhile, with his attractive screen presence, rarely shows an ounce of character, bottling any emotion into his mesmerizing bursts into the sky. The levity and colorful spark many previous comic adaptions provide have been sacrificed here, devoid of wisecracks or superhero spunk. Much of this is due to the near apocalyptic state Gen. Zod enforces upon the earth using his reptilian style aircrafts. Metropolis becomes prey to Transformers style demolition, recalling 9/11 imagery displayed so abruptly in Star Trek Into Darkness. Here, Snyder exaggerates the haunting terrorism to cataclysmic levels, only focusing on a few surviving soles amidst the mass fatalities. A final showdown between Gen. Zod and Superman, eyes glowing of magma red, feels less heroic, and more a personal battle over disaster relief.

Snyder confuses more maturity in his story arc for more three dimensional chaos. The first two thirds of the film seem intent on illustrating the mythology- the God among men and its biblical facsimile- while the last third indulges the arm extended soaring mid-air brawls. “Lead them to stop the mistakes we made,” Jor-El tells his son overlooking earth. Part of the comic book philosophy centers on socio-political critique within the cyclical Joseph Campbell hero’s journey. Man of Steel wants to be preoccupied with these elemental features, but Snyder’s brash tendencies see the armor in Superman’s tights more than their meaning.

Man of Steel opens today in Philly area theaters.

Official site.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

As powerful as the language and truth is in this film what struck me as being particularly noteworthy is its organic nature. This project gets better as more is added to it. What started out as a journey through the male perspective in How Would You Feel, evolves when we are invited to see the beginnings of the female perspective of the relationship as well. It’s an exciting prospect for me as a filmgoer to experience a film in one place and time, and enjoy it for what it intends to say with the full knowledge that it can only evolve in complexity from that point on as more character perspectives are introduced and explored. I fully believe film is a commentary on the time it was created, but I also think it can grow with you as an audience member, and An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is a perfect example of the potential in this form of storytelling.

And what a story it is. Rich in its dialogue, which is primarily delivered through narration, there are moments when the film has so many wonderful things to say that it gets a little bogged down in wordiness. So eager was I to swallow every word that it was sometimes difficult to follow each sentence to its intended conclusion. One is reminded of Orsini-Rosenberg’s critique of Mozart in Amadeus: ”too many notes.” But the use of language in this film is so deliberate–including the cadence of the narration sequences–that it is an easy fault to forgive. Everything about the film, from what is said, to what is seen reminds one of a brain in the midst of frenzied over-analysis. There is so much to unravel and dissect it is almost impossible not to watch this film again and again.

I also admire this film’s complete lack of phony sentimentality. Our leading man is more dedicated to his understanding of why he is in this relationship than feeling sorry for himself. With any other film dealing with the ramifications of a one-sided platonic relationship, we would be yelling at the screen, begging the afflicted party to see reality and get out while he/she still can. There is nothing illogical about this man in An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. And it’s through his actions and discoveries that we learn more about our own past experiences regardless of their similarity.

This is definitely a film still alive and growing and I am interested to see how much more could be added to this examination of human relationships. Our hearts and minds are never content until somethings are resolved, defined and understood to our satisfaction.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is now playing at the Ritz Bourse.

Official site.

With The Purge, writer/director James DeMonaco attempts to tell a Swiftian morality parable. How does society act when the restraints of responsibility and decorum are removed? In addition to this, he also questions the type of monetary stratification in society that leads to the privileged and the poor going head to head in an all out class war. With all of these high reaching societal commentaries in the movie, it ends up being jumbled in its execution. Too many agendas, not enough storytelling. The characters are poorly written, there is no explanation of their motives, and the rules seem to be set in terms of what happens every year at this time. As the movie gets to the part where the house is sieged by what we assume to be wealthy and bright-faced insurgents, the playful manner in which they kill and attack comes off as silly instead of menacing, turning this pivotal scene into a pornography of frustration instead of an effective action scene. Further, the lack of likable characters in the movie makes it difficult to root for anyone, leaving the death toll insignificant and the story even flatter.

At its core, The Purge is a science fiction movie. The world in which it takes place does not exist and the question is asked, “are we headed here?”  Unfortunately, the movie does less than invite the audience to look at themselves and ask this question. Instead, it leaves the viewer asking, “if every year, people are out to kill everyone for twelve hours, why would you install a costly security system that can be disabled by cutting one electrical cord?”

The Purge opens today in Philly area theaters.

Official site.

The Internship

Billy McMahon (Vince Vaughn) and Nick Campbell (Owen Wilson) are schmoozy, successful retail goods salesmen. With McMahon’s slick talk & Campbell’s Southern charm, the pair have honed their craft over the years to offset one another perfectly; these guys could sell ketchup to women in white gloves. But when Billy and Nick lose their jobs to a new automated ordering system, the two struggle to find work where they can apply their skill set. When Billy finds Nick at his lowest, working at a mattress store owned by his sister’s perverted boyfriend (Will Ferrell, in a cameo almost as good as the one in Wedding Crashers), Billy convinces Nick of the seemingly-impossible: to move to California and pursue an internship with Google, a light bulb idea that Billy came up with while searching the internet for jobs. When Billy and Nick arrive at Google for the internship program, it’s abundantly clear that they are comparative dinosaurs surrounded by whiz-kids and young geniuses, and they will need to utilize their life experience to apply a human element to the competition that their opponents and their binary mindset lack. In the process, they befriend their geek teammates, find love, and bolster their never-give-up attitude on the way to a happy ending.

Yes, it is every bit as sappy and far-fetched as it sounds. And it’s the same fish-out-of-water story that we’ve seen in other Vaughn vehicles like Old School and even Wedding Crashers to an extent. But unlike those movies, the comedy in The Internship rests on its laurels, totally earning its PG-13 rating with nonthreatening humor and ridiculously predictable plot lines. The family-friendly comedy wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if it wasn’t so self-aware of its own mediocrity. When characters tell Vaughn “You’re saying a lot of words that don’t mean anything,” one can’t help but feel like the writers (Vince Vaughn among them) are saying “we know.”

Though Wilson & Vaughn attack the material with vigor, the majority of the jokes fall flat. Lines like “I thought C++ was a test score!” are about as lazy as it gets in comedy writing, and though watching Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn huddle around a webcam like eagerly ignorant grandparents speaking with their tech-savvy children is mildly humorous, the laughs are just that: mild.  It’s difficult to fault the film for not being more memorable since it never aspires to be more than it is: a rehash capitalizing on the obvious chemistry between Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, set against a 90-minute commercial for Google. It’s a rental.

The Internship opens today in Philly area theaters.

Official site.

Directed by Zal Batmanglij who also co-wrote the film with Brit Marling, The East is a gritty, morally contentious, political thriller that poignantly captures the ethical quandaries of self-righteous activism and its destructive tendencies.  Jane (Brit Marling) is a secret operative for a large company that’s hired to protect the reputations of its high rolling clients. Her boss, Sharon (Patricia Clarkson), orders her to infiltrate The East, report back her findings, and discover the group’s future attack plans, called “jams.” Jane leaves her Washington domesticity, lies to her husband that she’s travelling to Abu Dhabi, and hitchhikes on a cargo train into an indistinct western Pennsylvania. Eluding police and scaling wired fences, Jane finds refuge with an East member who rushes her to their secluded backwoods fortress to treat her self-inflicted wound.

It’s here that she abruptly meets the environmentally militant collective, an eclectic array of individuals closely tethered to their cause. The leader of the pack is Benji (Alexander Skarsgård), a guarded, sensitive man who first appears to us donned in Jesus-like beard and hair. His closest disciples are a dropout med student named Doc (Toby Kebbell) and a hard-edged woman named Izzy (Ellen Page). They greet her reluctantly after she visits Doc, but slowly become more receptive after she participates in their crunchy communal traditions, one involving eating soup with no hands. As a group, The East has a similar appeal to that of Sean Durkin’s film Martha Marcy May Marlene, but Batamanglij is hesitant to portray this group as a pure cult and decides not to overexpose their wilderness living as being passionately or freakishly oblivious to the outside.

There is real heart and mind in this insular commune and Jane finds the group’s navigation into the sometimes-lethal covert operations they perform filled with differing layers of hypocrisy. “When it comes to breaking the law most people can’t handle it,” yells Izzy viciously, after Jane voices her reluctance to any fatal jams. It’s one of the central themes of the film that ultimately dilutes into a utopic compromise. The moral centers of the pharmaceutical, oil, and water giants have been eroded and in certain cases the group’s suggestions of nonviolent activism threaten to dismantle and cause a similar fate to the ecoterrorists themselves. Jane, or Sarah, as The East calls her, fights these types of dualities in her head: not to be too soft or too hard, to fight for what’s right, but to what end?

Batmanglij and Marling have worked together on recent ventures like Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, further examining the connective human condition and seductive pull of group dynamics. Jane negotiates between her duties and pacifist leanings with an assured gentility, trapped between the right and wrongs in each of her ventures. Marling projects this reserved state in her vacant expressions that subtly shift into accepting contented smiles, façades covering her slightest fears of exposure. Batmanglij realizes the importance of her fragile lies and emotional truths- including an intimate attraction to Benji- and fills these lurking moments of thought and silence full of energy.

Arguing over these decisions to poison, kill, or simply inconvenience powerful CEOs is the idyllic microcosm of what the filmmakers ostensibly want this country to surface in its national discourse. Patricia Clarkson, as Jane’s icy boss, plays apathetic to life unless it means dollars and business. “They’re not our client,” she harshly tells Jane over the phone once she realizes the sadistic depth of The East’s plan to the pharmaceutical bigwigs. She changes her mind later after realizing her firm could benefit from rebuilding their image. It’s this kind of soft-relativism that The East cynically cites as its motivating force, a force spiritually driven and present in so few average citizens.

The jams are private missions intent on becoming public, to expose the gated country club and golf course insensitivities to something as toxic as overt as their cruel indifference to the world. Jane’s biggest challenge is justifying their protection as though they are merely innocent victims. The film doesn’t get into the scrupulous specifics of environmental legalities like Silkwood or A Civil Action; instead, The East highlights the general decay of big business and morality when universal human rights are left on the backburner, allowing a counter-revolution to erupt from its radiation.

A small film about a big topic, The East has enough teeth to spur on its lingering questions and qualms. “Why does someone take a job like this?” Jane asks her now excluded and despondent husband. That’s a question ambiguous enough to be applied to the people she’s working to shield, even though they refuse to answer it. The question she- and hopefully we- wants to ask is “How do they still have jobs?”

The East opens in Philly area theaters today.

Official site.

Reviews I’ve read since viewing Wish You Were Here have criticized the writers for the restrained way in which story details are revealed. My experience of the film is the opposite. The way the story unfolds is minimalism at its best. Because of how the pieces slowly fall together, the viewer is left hungry for knowledge, and has no choice but to keep watching. There are a lot of different dynamics, such as the tension between leading man, David (Joel Edgerton), and his wife’s sister, Steph (Teresa Palmer). We also get the idea fairly early on that David knows more than he’s letting on. At no point do we feel bombarded with information. Instead, there is strong deliberation to every little detail as the story moves forward, so even with its nonlinear structure, the events remain compelling up until the final reveal.

The biggest selling point for the film, however, is the performances. In particular, Edgerton is flawless in his role as a man burdened by dark secrets. The weight of sins transpired during his vacation really shows in his face throughout. He made me feel his torture. Everyone else is pretty solid, too, demonstrating the stressful aftereffects of their experience throughout. Edgerton, though, is undoubtedly the standout.

The only real downside is that after the mystery is solved, the film takes a little too long in wrapping things up. Other than that, Wish You Were Here proves to be a formidable film to compete with this summer, if not at the box office, certainly in the quality department. The great acting, unconventional storytelling, and the slow-burning, tense unfolding of details make this an enjoyable watch.

Wish You Were Here opens today in Philly area theaters.

Official site.

Shakespeare’s classic comedy is given a contemporary spin in Joss Whedon’s film, Much Ado About Nothing.  Shot in just 12 days (and using the original text), the story of sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick offers a dark, sexy and occasionally absurd view of the intricate game that is love.

Much Ado About Nothing in Philadelphia theaters June 21.

Horror enthusiasts will also be treated to a selection of movie trailers from the slasher-film boom of the early 1980s that Don’t Go in the House helped initiate, followed by a discussion of the golden era of American horror film, the future of the genre, and how the archetypal American monster depicted in the film reflects the idea of fear in modern society. An event not to be missed!

American Original Pictures Presents: Don’t Go in the House
Friday, June 14th 8:00-11pm
1227 N. 4th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122

$10.00 at the door

From the Summer Scares Facebook page:

Summer Scares is a program of monthly horror movie screenings at 3rd Ward Philadelphia with interactive discussion and work-shopping. We feature special make-up FX seminars, sociological discussion, learning (but fun!) and fabulously freaky fun times. The series is presented and hosted by independent Philadelphia horror movie maker Isaac Williams of American Original Pictures.

3rd Ward official site.

Winners will be admitted with a guest. Please click on the image below to enter!

In 1993, Collette (Andrea Riseborough) lives in Belfast with her mother and brothers, all members of the IRA. After a failed attack in London, Collette is arrested and offered a choice: 25 years in jail, or becoming an informant for MI5, in effect spying on her own family.