MOVIES NOW AND THEN

Most action movies are episodic to varying degrees, but Salt particularly feels like multiple pieces with little connection between them. Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA operative on the run when a Russian defector claims she is a Russian mole sent to trigger another nuclear war. The first 40 minutes build this movie as a wrongful accusation story, like The Fugitive. It shows Salt improvising her way out of the CIA base in a fun, if far-fetched, set of sequences. The movie also includes a couple moments where Salt takes a breath or assesses the situation, clearly intending to build sympathy for her. This fretful atmosphere is ruined by jarring plot twists that occur around the halfway mark. From that point, the movie sloppily throws in scene after scene of Salt doing various tasks, aiming to make us question whether she is on the American side or the Russian side.

Salt does such a clumsy job establishing its title character that the mystery of her loyalty feels completely improvisational. There is almost no foreshadowing prior to each change, and there is usually nothing after the change to suggest another one is coming. Much of this is a timing issue. For example, the first details of the Russian terrorist plan appear at the same time that the accusation towards Salt does, and both events happen in the first 15 minutes. We have no time to meet Salt and to percept clues in her personality that may suggest a shadier dimension. Therefore, when she does seem to act on behalf of Russia, it feels like a sudden about-face rather than the validation of our suspicion. Salt would work better if it took the time to build the character’s mystery. Instead, it makes her alternate two roles back and forth in a choppy and indecisive fashion.

Christopher Nolan's cerebral science-fiction thriller Inception is an absolute dream by two accounts. First, it is a godsend to every mainstream movie fan deprived of anything truly involving this summer (aside from Toy Story 3). Second, it mirrors our subconscious apparitions by being an entrancing reverie as you watch it and a confounding puzzle when pondered in retrospect. In his first film since the megahit The Dark Knight, Nolan has intricately shaped an adventure more marvelous and mystifying than practically every other movie this year has seen so far.

The exclamation of predictability can be heard loud and clear within the first five minutes of Despicable Me, the new animated feature from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment. The opening sequence uses the old joke of somebody trying to catch an object and saying, “I got it!” just before he or she misses the target. At the screening I attended, a child anticipated the joke and loudly said, “I don’t got it!” before the character could (the character did not say that line, giving the routine a bit of moot surprise). The child did not say anything else the rest of the movie, which surprises me considering how much else in Despicable Me is recycled material. The film is as hackneyed as many other recent computer-animated features, though a few elements save it from being truly disposable.

I must confess that I have missed out on chances to really vent about a remake or recreation of a story I like. The Star Wars prequels began when I was only nine, and my taste in film was not mature enough at the time to see how bad they were. Likewise, I had only seen the original versions of The Karate Kid and A Nightmare on Elm Street once before reviewing the remakes, so my understanding of those movies was informed yet rudimentary. The Last Airbender, director M. Night Shyamalan’s adaptation of the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, has now granted me an irresistible opportunity. Shyamalan’s movie is such a hollow and anemic version of that superb show that the fan in me cannot wait to tell you how slipshod this product is.

It does not help that neither Cruise nor Diaz are particularly good in this movie. Cruise seems to be trying to make his role an everyman type of secret agent. That direction fits with his character's back story, but it ruins the already tenuous believability of his combat scenes. It is hard to take this agent seriously as a viable ally or threat when he acts so distractingly boyish and goofy in his downtime. At least he is more amusing than Diaz, who should have taken an earthier approach to her character. This girl is said to know how to repair a car and how to pick out usable parts out of scrap. Diaz does not look nearly casual enough for a hobby like that, let alone to make us conceive that she will become a willing assistant in international intrigue. Her weakness is not only with her appearance, for her half-hearted line delivery drags down the already lame humor (her truth serum scene is especially awkward). The film is forgettable by itself, but these two actors are insufficient to steer this supposed star vehicle.
 
First published in The Coastland Times

Almost 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2, Pixar Animation Studios is revisiting their biggest franchise with Toy Story 3. The span between the second and third film may have been primarily the fault of the Disney/Pixar ownership negotiations in the mid-2000s, but that time has been an unequivocal boon to the series. Many of the kids who saw the first movie in 1995 have reached the age where their childhood will be tucked away and reserved for rainy days or for time with their own children. What better way to signify that transition than with one more adventure with the toys that simultaneously enraptured the youth of the world while creating the art (or craze, to some) of the computer-animated feature?

DreamWorks Animation’s most successful franchise finally ends with this fourth chapter. The movie takes stock of everything that has happened to Shrek by placing him in an alternate reality, created by the twitchy trickster Rumpelstiltskin, in which he was never born. This darker story focuses more on action and character than on humor, and it allows Shrek and his friends to be their most heroic and sympathetic since the original film.

“Shrek Forever After” is a serviceable finale that emphasizes the series’ strengths and flaws. The main characters are as appealing as ever, largely because of their voice actors’ seasoned yet still likable performances. However, the anachronistic pop culture humor remains as hit-and-miss as ever. These modern jokes are less numerous than in the other sequels, but they still beg the question of whether they will date these movies. The film also seems the most chaotic, using quick editing and rarely stationary cinematography that render the proceedings somewhat exhausting.

The best moments occur when the alternate universe offers variations on jokes and scenes from the other movies. These details, which range from appearances of old props to direct quotations, are easy to recognize and help tie the series together into one story. A few recollections do rely too much on fond memories of the other movies (“I’m a Believer” is far less magical here than it was in the first “Shrek”). Still, “Shrek Forever After” is almost like a yearbook in how it allows fans to view highlights (albeit twisted ones) of their years in the kingdom of Far Far Away. It may not be as special as the first two movies, but it is a mostly satisfying conclusion.

First published in The Coastland Times