MCU Watch pt 1

Yesterday, Tyler, Bethany and I began our marathon of Marvel movies.  It's not like a real marathon, where we would have watched all 20 back-to-back.  We're old.  We started at a reasonable time and watched as many movies in a day as we all felt comfortable doing.  Less glamorous?  Yes.  But this is how to manage a project when you are over 30.

(I thought about doing a live blog but I didn't honestly think it would be very interesting.)

There was some initial debate about whether or not to watch the films within the timeline of the universe, which would mean starting with Captain America:  The First Avenger, or watching in release order,  which begins with Iron Man from 2008.  I won, so Iron Man was first up.

(We also briefly debated including the various TV shows like Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, and the like but ultimately that seemed like too much of a time sink so we're strictly sticking with the movies.)  

Iron Man:  Robert Downey, Jr. was 43 when he took on the role of Tony Stark and has not really aged a day since then.  This was the flagship movie of the MCU and it needed to be exceptional to win the kind of attention necessary to breathe life into this project.  Ten years later, it holds up really well by keeping the story simple.  Spoiled man gets a rude awakening to the real world.  Wants to change the establishment.  The Establishment, an older male in a father figure role, doesn't like it and tries to destroy the catalyst using the very tools created to change the world.  Fails due to an imperfect understanding of those tools.  Simple, iconic, and with mythic overtones.

The Incredible Hulk:  Also from 2008, this was a different beast entirely.  This was the first collaboration between studios in an attempt to create this shared universe.  See, Hulk was distributed by Universal, not Paramount.  That's why it doesn't look or feel the same.  There's been a lot of Monday night quarterbacking about how this film could have been better in the subsequent decade, especially in light of how Hulk has been handled in later films, but that doesn't really do anyone any good.  This is the Hulk movie we got.  And probably the only standalone Hulk movie we're ever gonna get.  Yes, there are problems with it.  Yes, the casting is weird.  BUT.  It achieved its objective, which was to bring the Incredible Hulk into the MCU and it solidified the tropes we've come to expect:  cameos and throwbacks as an homage to the comics,  easter eggs for future films and villains, the Stan Lee cameo, and even the stinger at the credits (not post-credit in this case, but just before.)

Iron Man 2:  Fast forward to 2010.  Remember when we had to wait for a Marvel movie once a year or even every other year, instead of every season?  This is a lot of people's least favorite Marvel film but I maintain that it is important to the canon as a whole.  It sets up more of the backstory between Tony and his father, Howard, that will be important in Civil War.  It brings in Black Widow for the first time and shows how important S.H.I.E.L.D. will become to Tony's future.  War Machine makes his first appearance.  Tony's issues with the military-industrial complex are furthered, making his later capitulation to the Sokovia Accords a huge shift in character development.  This movie is a big deal.

Thor:  I had watched this quite recently with Tyler so I checked out a little bit here.  (Holy shit, I actually just checked the date I watched it and it was a full calendar year ago.  It feels like it was just a couple of months.  God, it sucks to get old.)  This is the first MCU film that feels like it was actually designed for Blu-ray.  The space backgrounds are so gorgeous I can't stand it.  Thor is arguably the weakest character of all the heroes until Ragnarok and it's hard not to focus on that.  Honestly, Loki gets much more depth of character in the script and I think that's part of why he becomes so popular.  (The other reason is Tom Hiddleston.)  Loki and his abandonment issues are more interesting than Thor and his entitlement.  

Stay tuned for next week when we tackle more of Phase One!

Marathon Man (1976)

  Talk about a horror movie.  Watch this and tell me if you can look at your dentist ever again without breaking into a cold sweat.  Jesus.

Babe Levy (Dustin Hoffman) is working on his graduate thesis at Columbia University and training to enter a marathon when he is drawn into a dangerous international web of diamond smuggling involving his brother Doc (Roy Schider), shadowy government personnel (William Devane), and a dental tool-wielding Nazi (Laurence Olivier).

This was made before I was born but it still holds up remarkably well as an edge-of-your-seat movie.  Sir Laurence Olivier is absolutely chilling as the White Angel.  Now I know why people speak his name with such reverence.  The man disappeared into that role.  I was totally blown away.

The Boys from Brazil (1978)

  This was a shockingly intense film, especially considering its age, anchored by incredible performances.

Seriously, people talk about Laurence Olivier as one of the world's greatest acting talents but the man died when I was six-years-old.  It's not like I grew up familiar with his work.  But seeing him go from Marathon Man to this film beggars belief.  It's not just that he's amazing in both roles, it's how different the two performances are.  He went from smooth murderer the White Angel to frail Nazi-hunter Ezra Lieberman in two years.  Do you know how short that is in movie-world?  That's crazy.  And then, there's James Mason, one of the best English villains, and Gregory Peck looking like Powers Boothe with the jet black hair and the mustache.

A young Nazi-hunter (Steve Guttenberg with a baby face!) in Paraguay accidentally uncovers an international assassination plot headed by Nazi scientist and straight-up evil motherfucker Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck).  He passes some of the information to acclaimed Nazi-hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) but is killed before he can get all of it.  Lieberman is initially reluctant to get involved, but his curiosity eventually gets the better of him.  Soon, however, he realizes that the 94 projected murders are just the tip of the iceberg.

This is a slow-burner of a movie, taking the first hour just to set up the central plot point but it's worth it.  Even when you know what's coming, you'll still be riveted to your seat, especially during the final confrontation.  Knowing that these characters were all based on real war criminals only makes it that much more disturbing. 

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

  We are zipping right through the G's.

It's been several years since the events of the first film and Billy Peltzer (Zach Gilligan) has realized his dream of moving to New York City and working as an artist.  Unfortunately, he had not counted on the cutthroat world of corporate art being so demanding.  To make matters worse, Gizmo the Mogwai is captured by scientists working at a genetic research lab in the same building.  Soon, the place is infested with nasty pop-culture-skewering Gremlins.  Billy, his girlfriend Kate (Phoebe Cates), and the CEO who owns the building (John Glover) must race against time to stop them from getting out into the city.

People dismiss this because it drastically changed in tone from the first movie.  There are a lot more in-jokes, celebrity cameos, and slapstick moments in this than there was in the original.  You either embrace those changes or you don't.  Personally, I liked this one more as a kid.  That may have been because I was a little too young to "get" Gremlins but I was the right age for the sequel.  As an adult, I think the first movie was more well-crafted, but I still love the insanity of the second one.  Also, this time around I finally caught the Marathon Man reference.

The Sessions (2012)

Nominated for:  Best Supporting Actress    Seriously?  This only got nominated for Best Supporting Actress?  No Best Actor?  No Best Adapted Screenplay?  Really?  That just seems wrong to me.

Not that Helen Hunt doesn't deserve a nomination.  For a 49-year-old woman, she showed a great deal of courage by willing to be shown naked on screen.  It helps that she still has the body of a 25-year-old but still.

But, holy shit, John Hawkes.  How has this man not won an Oscar?  Especially after Winter's Bone.  Everybody thought that was a shoe-in and here he is playing a quadraplegic and nothing?  Maybe it's like the Tropic Thunder curse.  You never go full Disabled.

Based on an article written by poet Mark O'Brian, this is the story of a man (John Hawkes) who decides to lose his virginity at 38.  Difficulty:  he is completely paralyzed by childhood polio and sleeps in an iron lung.  After discussing the situation with his priest (William H. Macy), he decides to seek the services of a professional sex surrogate (Helen Hunt). 

It's funny, it's sweet, and it's readily accessible.  One of the best of the bunch so far.

Speaking of, today is the day, people!  Tonight we get to find out who's walking away with what and who wore something stupid in a desperate bid for attention.  That's right!  Oscar Sunday, coming at you tonight.  Which means that I have until then to post as many nominees as I can find.  I was super-busy at work this week so I didn't get a chance to really watch more than this one and the last short.  So stick around because today is going to be a good old-fashioned movie marathon.

Creed (2015)

  This was a phenomenal movie.  I had held off on seeing it because I had only seen two of the 6 Rocky movies but there's really no reason to wait.  Yes, it does reference the other films but you're never going to feel lost on some plot point.

Adonis Johnson (Michael B. Jordon), the illegitimate son of legendary boxer Apollo Creed, fought his way through foster care and juvenile detention centers until being adopted by Mary Anne Creed (Phylicia Rashad), his father's widow.  Mary Anne wants him to be an executive in a white-collar job but Adonis can't give up boxing.  He moves to Philadelphia to convince his father's rival, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), to train him.  Rocky is reluctant to make any new connections in what he sees as a holding pattern for death but Adonis is persistent.  They get an unprecedented opportunity when the manager for the world's lightweight champion "Pretty" Ricky Conlan (Tony Bellew) contacts them about a title fight.  Conlan is looking at a serious jail sentence and needs a quick win for a lot of cash to make sure his family is taken care of while he's away.  He hopes to trade on Adonis' legacy as a Creed to generate publicity but Adonis isn't sure if he even has a claim to that name.

The best sports movies are the ones that are only incidentally about sports.  Sure, this has training montages, the famous steps in front of the courthouse, and the iconic theme, but Ryan Coogler transcends the label of "Rocky sequel" for an examination of identity, and how our traumas shape who we are.  Stallone puts in probably his best work in the last 15 years here as a quiet man grown comfortable in his has-been status, just waiting to die.  It makes you believe that he has been nominated for three Oscars.  Jordan is a fast-rising star and his performance here is no exception.  Tessa Thompson isn't given a lot to do here as the love interest but she's always a joy to watch.

This movie did something I never thought would happen:  it made me want to watch all the Rocky movies.  Maybe that's a marathon I could do before Creed II gets released on DVD.

The Crow: City of Angels (1996)

It's my birthday!  Enjoy this extra post!    Monday before last, when I completely whiffed on posting, hereafter referred to as Lucy's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day, I was planning on having a Crow marathon, since I had finally gotten all four movies.  I watched the original on blu-ray for the first time, then when I went to put it back on the shelf I realized that my copy of The Crow:  Salvation was missing.

You guys know how obsessed I am with my movies, right?  So for one to just have vanished is an awful occurrence.  It's why I stopped lending movies back in my teens.  Now, I'm not mad because I had a particular love for that film because it's mostly crap, but I am seriously pissed that it is gone.  I can only assume that it somehow made its way into Rob's boxes of DVDs.  I won't find out for sure until he unpacks in his new apartment at the end of September.

It took a couple of days, but I moved on.

I remember when the sequel came out and I categorically hated it.  Mostly because it didn't have Brandon Lee and I felt that it was a tacky attempt to cash in on the cult-like adoration fans of the original have for it.  Now that I am older and less emotional, I can go back and watch it again with a more objective eye.  It's still awful but I no longer find it personally offensive.

The little girl, Sarah, from the first movie has moved from Detroit to Los Angeles and inexplicably changed from a blonde to a brunette.  We know it is the same girl because she still has Shelley's engagement ring and white cat.  Sarah (Mia Kirshner) now has visions of a man and his son being shot and then drowned.  She goes to the pier and finds a new revenant named Ashe (Vincent Perez) who has been chosen by the Crow to become a spirit of vengeance against the gang of thugs who murdered him and his son.  This gang includes Iggy Pop, Thomas Jane, the yellow Power Ranger and is led by an ADA from Law & Order.

Judah (Richard Brooks) runs the drug trade in LA and wears costumes left over from Stargate.  His blind oracle (Tracey Ellis) tells him that he can take the Crow's power by killing the bird, so he kidnaps Sarah in order to lure Ashe and his winged avatar to his building.

What's really awful about this film is that it was written by the same guy who wrote the Batman Begins trilogy, David S. Goyer.  You can kind of see how they were trying to make something dark and lyrical that evoked the previous movie but it's just a big mess.  There's an attempt to tie it to the Day of the Dead celebrations but it comes across as more of an excuse to show people dressed as devils and skeletons.  Perez is Swiss and mostly does French films, and his accent bleeds through here with no rhyme or reason.  He commits to the part because he is a very good actor, but it wasn't right for him.

Inception (2010)

I feel like I just ran a marathon. Without a doubt, the movie to beat for the year. Holy shit. Despite the fact that the person next to me kept trying to talk to me, this was the best time I have had in a movie theater since Iron Man 2.

I can't begin to describe the lushness of the cinematography. Every detail was exquisite. It perfectly captured that subtle wrongness that exists within the dreaming mind. Impeccable.

I am a big fan of things that challenge the perception of reality, or even that there is an overarching reality, when it isn't being used as a cop-out, like Repo Men. The multiple layers of the dreams, the symbolism of events (it's raining because somebody didn't go pee before they started dreaming); all that is like Lucy-candy. I instantly fell in love with the idea that dreams are a labyrinthine space with your deepest secrets waiting there like the minotaur to ambush you.

Best. Movie. This year. Hands down.