Spango Dips

Milk ★★★½

Deeply moving, heroic biopic about Harvey Milk (Penn), who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, holding the office of San Francisco City Supervisor for the better part of a year before his assassination in November of 1978. Penn’s beautifully openhearted performance lends the film the kind of rich humanity that movies of its ilk too often lack; first-time 29-year-old writer Dustin Lance Black also deserves kudos for having interwoven the events and themes of Milk’s political and personal lives so elegantly, making the necessary point that the gay rights issue is of course deeply personal to those fighting on its frontline. A very strong drama in a year sorely wanting for one. Penn and Black won well-deserved Oscars.

(2008) C-128m. D: Gus Van Sant. W: Dustin Lance Black. DP: Harris Savides. SEAN PENN, EMILE HIRSCH, JOSH BROLIN, DIEGO LUNA, JAMES FRANCO, ALLISON PILL, VICTOR GARBER, DENIS O’HARE. [R]

Tropic Thunder ★★½

Fun farce in which a trio of spoiled Hollywood actors (Stiller, Black, Downey) become involved in a very real armed conflict in Southeast Asia while shooting a Vietnam War film. Smacks of ¡THREE AMIGOS! more than a little bit, and is not without pacing problems, and the filmmakers seem to believe that the spectacle of Tom Cruise dancing in a fatsuit is sufficiently funny on principle to warrant giving it ten minutes of screen time, but the film’s first half hour is so roaringly funny that a minimum rating of two stars was virtually guaranteed on its strength alone. Lustrous, dead-straight jungle cinematography from John Toll only exaggerates the silliness of the premise.

(2008–US–Germany) C-107m. D: Ben Stiller. W: Ben Stiller, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen. DP: John Toll. BEN STILLER, JACK BLACK, ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., NICK NOLTE, STEVE COOGAN, JAY BARUCHEL, DANNY R. MCBRIDE, BRANDON T. JACKSON, BILL HADER, BRANDON SOO HOO, REGGIE LEE, TRIEU TRAN, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, TOM CRUISE. Panavision. [R]

Pineapple Express ★★★

Behold the world’s first “stoner action” movie—in the words of the film’s own infamously cannabistically-inclined writing team (who also gave us SUPERBAD)—which concerns two potheads (Rogen, Franco) who witness a murder performed by the criminal syndicate that operates the supply of their preferred drug, and have to take it on the run, with hilarious and deeply, darkly weird consequences. The film aspires to be a throwback to the 80s action comedy, and all the elements are there, right down to the Huey Lewis song that plays over the closing credits, but they’re arranged in the most disarmingly choppy way; sequences of relatively innocuous slapstick or sitcom humor are placed alongside depictions of graphic carnage with almost reckless levity. The funniest moments, however, most of which center around the delightfully naturalistic dialogue between the two leads (and the indispensable third character of Red, brilliantly played by McBride), really do carry enough momentum to make it work.

(2008) C-111m. D: David Gordon Green. W: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. DP: Tim Orr. SETH ROGEN, JAMES FRANCO, DANNY R. MCBRIDE, KEVIN CORRIGAN, CRAIG ROBINSON, GARY COLE, ROSIE PEREZ, ED BEGLEY, JR., NORA DUNN, AMBER HEARD, JOE LO TRUGLIO, ARTHUR NAPIONTEK, CLEO KING, BILL HADER, JAMES REMAR. Panavision. [R]

W. ★★

Ill-timed and trifling account of George W. Bush’s path to the presidency, with Brolin’s bumbling portrayal extending from Bush’s careless college days all the way to the crucial weeks in which the decision to invade Iraq was reached. Apart from the predictable daddy issues, this is pretty much a comedy, which I suppose is the only treatment of the subject that really seems apropos. A strong supporting cast (Cromwell, Dreyfuss, and Glenn are especially convincing) keeps it serviceable as light entertainment, but it carries nothing in the way of historical weight, and, as comedies go, it’s not terribly funny.

(2008–US–Hang Kong–Germany–UK–Australia) C-129m. D: Oliver Stone. W: Stanley Weiser. DP: Phedon Papamichael. JOSH BROLIN, ELIZABETH BANKS, JAMES CROMWELL, RICHARD DREYFUSS, JEFFREY WRIGHT, THANDIE NEWTON, SCOTT GLENN, ELLEN BURSTYN, TOBY JONES, IOAN GRUFFUDD, BRUCE MCGILL, JASON RITTER, NOAH WYLE. Panavision. [PG-13]

The Dark Knight ★★½

Vivid second film in director Nolan’s new BATMAN series is a mixed bag, weighing, on one hand, one of the most needlessly convoluted plots and infuriatingly messy compositions among big films in recent memory, against, on the other, a truly stunning realization of The Joker, which ranks as the high point of the late Heath Ledger’s career. Top marks for the film’s thoroughgoing bleakness and savagery, at the center of which is Ledger, but viewers should expect to have to see it at least twice to make adequate sense of it, and even then there will be plot points and character arcs that simply don’t wash.

(2008) C-152m. D: Christopher Nolan. W: Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan. DP: Wally Pfister. CHRISTIAN BALE, HEATH LEDGER, AARON ECKHART, MICHAEL CAINE, MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, GARY OLDMAN, MORGAN FREEMAN, MONIQUE CURNAN, RON DEAN, CILLIAN MURPHY, CHIN HAN, NESTOR CARBONELL, ERIC ROBERTS, RITCHIE COSTER, ANTHONY MICHAEL HALL, COLIN MCFARLANE, JOSHUA HARTO, MELINDA MCGRAW, NATHAN GAMBLE, MICHAEL JAI WHITE, WILLIAM FICHTNER. Panavision. [PG-13]

Batman Begins ★★★½

Sensational revival of the BATMAN franchise strips the story of all traces of traditional comic book camp, treating it instead with the kind of gritty sincerity usually reserved for authentic crime dramas. Like, you know, for grown-ups? Dazzling set pieces and effects, a terrific supporting cast, and a screenplay that smartly emphasizes the story’s psychological undercurrent make this the best film yet to bear the BATMAN stamp.

(2005) C-140m. D: Christopher Nolan. W: Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer. DP: Wally Pfister. CHRISTIAN BALE, MICHAEL CAINE, LIAM NEESON, KATIE HOLMES, MORGAN FREEMAN, GARY OLDMAN, CILLIAN MURPHY, TOM WILKINSON, RUTGER HAUER, KEN WATANABE, LINUS ROACHE, RADE SHERBEDGIA, MARK BOONE JUNIOR. Panavision. [PG-13]

WALL•E ★★★½

Pixar’s perfect record remains intact with this gorgeous piece about a lonely janitorial robot on a trash-covered, uninhabitable Earth in the distant future, who sets off with a sleek, super-advanced recon probe to discover, almost by accident, how such a terrible fate befell the planet. Remarkable for its elegance in doing so many things at once: it’s a persuasive and bitingly germane green parable—so palatable and so entertaining that it hardly feels preachy at all—it’s a deeply involving love story, it’s almost a throwback to the silent era with its emphasis on action and extremely low dialogue quotient (a very brave choice indeed in this day and age), and it’s riotously funny. Proudly different and yet utterly universal; stellar work from the FINDING NEMO team, led by writer-director Stanton. A career-best score from Thomas Newman and wonderful titles by Jim Capobianco only bolster the movie’s uniqueness.

(2008) C-103m. D: Andrew Stanton. W: Andrew Stanton. FRED WILLARD; VOICES OF BEN BURTT, ELISSA KNIGHT, JEFF GARLIN, JOHN RATZENBERGER, KATHY NAJIMY, SIGOURNEY WEAVER. Digital Widescreen. [G]

The Happening ½★

I seriously don’t even know where to begin with this one. I’ll give it a shot though. Take the silliest B-movie idea since ATTACK OF THE KILLER TOMATOES!, then take it deadly seriously, then paint over its ridiculousness with a double-coat of fulsome, didactic allegory. There’s your treatment. Then get a sixth-grader of below-average intelligence to think up the characters and plot, providing him with tapes of All My Children episodes as templates. Then get his even-dumber little brother, who is also deaf, to write the dialogue. Then, good as it already is, tweak the script to make the characters a little more despicable and immune to logic. Bam, ready to shoot. Then hire Mark Wahlberg to lead the film emotionally. Then fill out the cast with robots. Then, when one of the robots malfunctions during rehearsal, and can no longer move, and it’s clear it can’t perform in the cast after all, show your kindness by making it the director. Make sure it understands the concepts of close-up and slo-mo; that’s all it will need. Then edit the film with a lawnmower and some double-stick tape, score it with the Orch. Hit voice on your Casio, slap together a title sequence with a Video Toaster… have I made my point? Either M. Night suffered a head trauma, or he really had a movie this spectacularly dreadful in him all along; either way, this is a truly special, once-in-a-career failure. My extremely generous half-a-star rating is sheerly for the movie’s prodigious, accidental comic power.

(2008-US-India) C-91m. D: M. Night Shyamalan. W: M. Night Shyamalan. DP: Tak Fujimoto. MARK WAHLBERG, ZOOEY DESCHANEL, JOHN LEGUIZAMO, ASHLYN SANCHEZ, BETTY BUCKLEY, SPENCER BRESLIN, FRANK COLLISON, JEREMY STRONG, ALAN RUCK, VICTORIA CLARK. [R]

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ★★½

The disappearance of a colleague among ancient South American ruins sets Indiana Jones (Ford) back on his adventurin’ way, reuniting him with his old flame Marion Ravenwood (Allen), and… no one else from the old films (where’s Sallah?), as they venture to unlock the titular kingdom and solve the mystery of the titular skull. While, of course, staying one step ahead of the Soviets, who would use the skull’s arcane power to… spread the message of communism, apparently. So it’s not without problems, and as a friend suggested, it does feel at times like a comeback tour where the band can’t play the songs quite like they used to. Regardless, I still had a good deal of fun getting caught up in the action sequences (a domain in which Mr. Spielberg is still without peer among directors), and savoring the flavors of the 1950s, which are omnipresent not only in the production design, but in the performances and camerawork as well, and which really are as well captured (I can only speculate) as were those of the 30s and 40s in the original trilogy. Story credited to George Lucas and Jeff Nathanson.

(2008) C-124m. D: Steven Spielberg. W: David Koepp. DP: Janusz Kaminski. HARRISON FORD, CATE BLANCHETT, KAREN ALLEN, SHIA LABEOUF, RAY WINSTONE, JOHN HURT, JIM BROADBENT, IGOR JIJIKINE. Panavision. [PG-13]

Iron Man ★★★

Wealthy playboy industrialist Tony Stark (Downey), taken prisoner following a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan, uses his tech savvy to fashion himself a metal exoskeleton, and in so doing births one of the unlikeliest superheroes in the pantheon. The Marvel people strike gold here, turning what was inarguably one of their lesser comic book products into one of the better superhero movies of this glutted decade. Particular applause for the movie’s first hour, which lays out the backstory exposition with a remarkable deftness and sense of fun, and does an especially good job of nesting the myth—inoffensively!—within a contemporary political/military context. The second hour introduces the movie’s only clichés as the villain emerges, but Downey’s brilliantly light touch (this is the role he was born to play; how often do you say that about a performance in a summer blockbuster?) and the admirable tightness of its script still keep it well ahead of the genre’s drab norm. Kudos to director Jon Favreau, who has come a long way indeed!

(2008) C-126m. D: Jon Favreau. W: Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. DP: Matthew Libatique. ROBERT DOWNEY, JR., TERRENCE HOWARD, JEFF BRIDGES, GWYNETH PALTROW, LESLIE BIBB, SHAUN TOUB, FARAN TAHIR, SAYED BADREYA, BILL SMITROVICH, CLARK GREGG. Panavision. [PG-13]