Super (Saturday, April 2, 2011) (21)

Super is a gonzo comic book movie straight out of the brain of a disaffected 15 year-old boy... or out of the brain of writer/director James Gunn. There is nothing here that your mother would like. It's crass, bawdy and silly - sorta Mystery Men meets Evil Dead.

Frank (Rainn Wilson) is a loser fry cook living in Anytown Exurbia, U.S.A. He has a terrible life and his wife, Sarah (Liv Tyler), hates him and only married him because she was getting straight after a stint in rehab. She leaves him for Jacques (or Jock, as Frank understands his name) (Kevin Bacon) a piece-of-shit strip-mall strip club owner and drug dealer, which sends him into a downward spiral of self-loathing.

One day he goes into a comic book store and meets the clerk there, Libby (Ellen Page). The two decide that they will design their own super hero personae (the Crimson Bolt and Boltie) and fight bad guys on their own. It's very similar in story (and tone) to Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim (both from last year).

What follows is one of the silliest Looney-Tunesy riffs I've seen in a long time. It's totally gross with tons of blood and foul language, but totally enjoyable. It's a sad world of despair and cruelty and Frank, as the Crimson Bolt, is violent and remorseless. After he blows someone's head off with a gigantic gun, he steps on his brains to rub in the point.

The script here is hilarious, bittersweet and very clever. Gunn has the perfect mix of stupidity and archness to make the dialogue feel as real as anything you'd see from an art-house think-piece. The acting is fantastic, particularly the supporting cast of Bacon, Tyler and Michael Rooker. Both Wilson and Page are actors who frequently err on the side of overdoing roles, but here they are both understated and give great, painful performances.

The best scene of the film, and one of the best comedy scenes I've witnessed in a long time, has Libby throwing herself at Frank, who is not really interested in her (he is, after all, trying to win back Sarah's heart). She convinces him that if they wear their costumes the sex will be better and easier for him to take and he won't really be cheating on Sarah. She puts on music and does this weird, uncomfortable dance (reminiscent of that Elaine Benes jig from Seinfeld), which is utterly unhot. She then mounts him and proceeds to... well, to rape him in the most silly and awkward way. In terms of "funny rape" scenes (yes, there's a category for that) it's up there for me with the one from Observe and Report (the best funny rape scene ever).

More than anything, this is a tale of melancholia and pitifulness, set in the most average, beige Americana background. It is hilarious, but there is a dark cloud of pain lying below the surface. I think it's a rather deep movie (like Observe and Report) that is wearing a gross-out comedy gown. I think there is more there than meets the eye... underneath the superhero mask.

Stars: 3 of 4

Let Me In (Saturday, October 2, 2010) (127)

Let Me In is film mysteriously set in Los Alamos, New Mexico - yes, that Los Alamos that you think about when you're looking for a really cold and snowy place. It apparently is pretty cold and pretty snowy, but why this film is not set in Minnesota or Wisconsin is totally beyond me. Sure there are beaches in Alaska, but would you set a Spring Break movie there?

The film is based on the Swedish book Let the Right One In, which was made into a very good film in 2008. The story transcends the vampire genre. Owen is a 12-year-old kid who has no friends and is the main target of the school bully's cruelty, both physical and psychological. His family is broken and he lives with his mother in a sad apartment complex. One night when he is sitting on the jungle gym outside of the apartment (in the snow - because when it's cold and snowy outside it's totally normal to sit outside) he meets Abby, a strange girl who doesn't wear shoes and immediately tells him that they can't be friends, "because that's just how it is."

It turns out that she's a vampire and the older man she lives with kills people to harvest their blood to keep her happy and healthy and protect her from her own nature. When he's unable to get the blood, she goes wild and attacks people like a demon. Of course she keeps this all a secret, but slowly we discover this as she and Owen become friends.

She is a source of happiness in the middle of his lonely life. She helps him stand up to the bullies in school and respects him as a friend - becoming his only friend. The problem, of course, is that she is not a girl and she doesn't live a normal life.

Most of the scenes in the film take place at night, and many of them are outside in the snow. This lends a sense of peace and beauty, despite the violence that underlies the story. The only problem is that writer/director Matt Reeves uses a score (by Michael Giacchino) that is constantly present in every shot of every scene. In moments of calmness and docility, we always hear music, as if we need reminding of the quietness of the scene (rather than just letting us have silence). In scenes with more drama, the score is also there, as the tools of the genre dictate. This is just one example of how Reeves has the opportunity to make a film that is truly beyond the slasher genre, but falls back into the bloody hole of the style dictates time and time again.

I would have loved a movie about a real-world vampire girl who has to live and move around in the real world. The setting for the film is totally real-feeling and seems like a place we might remember (from the 1980s). The problem is that when she sees blood or needs blood, her eyes become cat-like and yellow and her skin gets gray, transforming the sweet girl into a horrible monster. This comes down to just schlocky slasher-flick crap and it totally doesn't fit in with the tone of the film. There are about three scenes that are significantly more bloody and gory than they need to be - again because Reeves is happier to give the blood-thirsty audience something to hoot about rather than something that would fit in well with the film.

The acting throughout is very good. Richard Jenkins plays Abbby's older man friend/father, a man who loves the girl and can't get out of his bizarre relationship with her. Chloe Moretz (who was previously in Kick-Ass) is Abby and is very good as is Kodi Smit-McPhee as Owen (who was previously the boy in The Road).

There are a lot of silly things in the film as well as some things that are simply unnecessary. Owen's mother's face is never seen as she is always shot out of focus in the distance or from behind. I guess this is supposed to lend a sense of isolation and alienation - and underlines the messed-up nature of his family - but it's way too heavy-handed (we could have had the mother talk like Charlie Brown's teacher and it would have been about the same result). In one scene with a woman who has become a vampire, she is seen sucking her own blood. I guess that could happen in some weird, kinky vampire circles, but it would seem to be outside of the general vampire mythology. (Mostly this whole sequence with the other vampire is just an excuse for more blood and gore - but is totally separate from the Owen-Abby story.)

I guess it's fair that Americans wanted to re-make a successful movie - or re-adapt an interesting book about vampires (they're so hot now!), but I don't think this does enough different from the first to be totally worthwhile. I have not read the book, but just comparing this film to the last, it seems to me that it's basically the same (it even looks the same - and I'll forgive the fact that Los Alamos in the winter is not as cold as Sweden in the winter) with a lot more blood and violence. In fact this film is much less sympathetic and psychologically connected than the first one was. I think this is a shame as it was those elements that made the first one stand out among other vamp fare.

Stars: 2 of 4

Enter the Void (Sunday, September 26, 2010) (123)

I only know writer/director Gaspar Noé from his 2002 film Irreversible, which got a lot of attention at the time for it's unusual structure and the very, very violent rape scene with Monica Bellucci. I guess I was prepared for Enter the Void to be a difficult film, but I could have never expected what I got. Watching this film is a totally arduous experience. Noé uses bright, flashing lights and odd focus tricks, unusual moving cameras, sudden and loud noises and some of the most direct sexual and violent material I have seen in recent years. Beneath these elements, the film is rather dull as the underlying story is banal and difficult to connect with.

The basic story is of American loser and waistoid Oscar who lives in Tokyo for some amount of time. At a certain point he begins to deal drugs in the expat clubbing community. His younger sister Linda visits him and falls in with a Japanese pimp. Ultimately when a drug deal goes bad, Oscar is killed by the Japanese vice squad. From there we see backwards, how Oscar got to that point, and forwards, about what his sister does after his death.

The main focus of the film is the unusual points-of-view of each of the three acts. The first act (about Oscar dealing drugs and getting iced) is interestingly shown from his subjective point-of-view - as if we were looking out of his eyes and hearing in voice over his internal thoughts. There are some clever camera tricks use here (like when he looks in a mirror at one point). When Oscar takes some drugs, we go into his brain to see what he is "seeing" internally - which is basically some trippy psychedelic stuff reminiscent of the third act of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mostly this is showy and annoying (it's basically a long hand-held camera shot with some Windows 95 screen-saver computer animation in the middle).

The second act is told from behind Oscar's head (sorta like the shots of Olivier Gourmet in the Dardenne Brothers' Le Fils). We are following Oscar as he goes about doing and dealing drugs and fucking all sorts of whores and girlfriends (heckuva life, buddy).

The last act seems to be from the point-of-view of Oscar's spirit or soul (ugh, even writing that makes me sorta sick). Everything is shot from above with a very "floaty" camera. We go through walls and fly around the city from one sinful location to another seeing what Linda after he's gone. Not to ruin anything, but we get to go into Linda's vagina as she's having sex and see her male partner's penis pushing toward us and ejaculating. Uh. I don't know what to say about this, other than it's totally unnecessary and pretty fucking dumb.

But that's really the whole movie. Oscar and Linda are really boring characters who are never sober and have nothing to say of any interest (there's a back story that they were orphaned when they were young when their folks died in a bad car accident). Their expat friends are lowlifes. The drug stuff is boring and only style with no substance.

I got rather motion sick watching this, with all the moving cameras and drug-addled views of the world. There is a recurring thing where Oscar remembers the car accident that killed his parents - which means that at just about any moment there could be a tremendously loud and sudden car crash into the middle of the screen (just in case we were getting comfortable in our seats as we're getting jizzed on by gigantic cocks). The script structure is just as showy and unnecessary as the drug visions and camera work. Big deal that it's not linear. That makes it annoying, not interesting. I guess I give Noé credit for being brave enough to do what he wanted to do - I just didn't particularly like it.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Machete (Sunday, September 5, 2010) (113)

Machete (co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis) is a gonzo B-movie spoof based on a trailer for a phony movie in the middle of the Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature Grindhouse from a few years ago. Machete (Danny Trejo) is a renegade Mexican Federale who runs into the powerful world of Mexican drug lord Torrez (Steven Seagal).

He escapes to Texas a few years later and is hired by a guy named Booth (Jeff Fahey) to assassinate Senator McLaughlin (Robert DeNiro) (who, it turns out, Booth works for), an anti-immigration demagogue gaining strength in the polls for the upcoming election. When the shooting goes wrong, Machete must go underground into a network of Mexican immigrants (called The Network!) to save his skin and fight back against a rising tide of anti-immigrant venom coming from McLaughlin and the renegade border sheriff Stillman (Don Johnson).

Typical of a good B-movie, he is assisted along the way by scantily clad hot women with big boobs (who are all too happy to show them). Machete not only kills people but he's a prolific fucker, bedding the head of the Network, Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), as well as the head of an I.C.E. task force, Sartana (Jessica Alba), who herself is conflicted about her position on immigration. (He also has a brief three-some thing with Booth's daughter, played by Lindsay Lohan, and wife - who are both thrilled to strip nude as well).

This is a totally fun and hilarious film to say the least. The ridiculous story seems to have more and more levels of intricacy as a way of thumbing us in the eye and keeping us focused on the immediate actions of characters rather than the bigger picture. The dialogue is full of amazingly written horrible one-liners, very self-aware of how they will be received. The main problem with the script (written by Rodriguez and his cousin Alvaro), and with the film overall, is that it is too long. Clocking in around 105 minutes, it should have been cut to closer to 90-minutes as it drags significantly in the middle third.

This is not a "smart" movie, per se, despite the rather heavy-handed pro-Mexican, pro-immigrant political text. This is a ridiculous gorefest where people are chopped apart by blades and blown up by bombs as a matter of fun. It very cleverly plays with genre conventions and constantly alludes to schlocky B-films, Blaxploitation pieces and bad crime flicks (think of Machete as a more rugged and Latin Shaft). It is not for everyone - if you don't get it, you're just not going to get it - but I think it's really enjoyable.

Stars: 3 of 4

Mesrine: The Killer Instinct (Saturday, August 28, 2010) (109)

The Killer Instinct is the first of a two-part biopic on French super criminal Jacques Mesrine who tore across France and Quebec from the late 1950s through the 1970s robbing banks, kidnapping billionaires and killing scores of people.

The story opens as Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is in Algeria in the late 1950s torturing a few insurgents along with his fellow French soldiers. When he gets back from the war, his loving father has arranged a nice, respectable job for him in a factory. He wants none of this and falls back in with his childhood best buddy, Paul, who introduces him to crime-boss Guido (Gerard Depardieu).

Mesrine stars running small jobs for Guido (robbing houses, beating up rogue pimps) and builds his reputation and his lust for blood and violence. At some point he goes to Spain with Paul and knocks up a woman there who he marries and has three kids with. Ultimately he has to leave France on the lam and ends up in Montreal with his new girlfriend Jeanne. There they keep robbing, kidnapping and killing, ultimately getting caught and locked up in maximum security prison. Mesrine breaks out, of course, and then returns to the prison to take out his frustrations on the warden.

More than a proper narrative, the story is simply a string of action pieces, one leading to the next, leading to the next. There is very little motivation for these sequences. Mostly he commits a crime, gets away from it, and just when you think he'd be wise to stop, he commits another crime - as if addicted to the thrill. Characters come and go with little explanation (only minutes after his wife leaves him to return to Spain, we meet Jeanne who picks up with him on a robbery with no explanation), and locations change dramatically from one moment to the next.

Vincent Cassel is good in the role, however the writing of the character is so limited there's not very much for him to work with. We never really understand what drives Mesrine or what he gets out of the violence. We see that he gets bored with a simple domestic lifestyle, but we never totally understand why he does what he does. Depardieu is also a good enough actor to make Guido work enough, but in the end he is just another banal "type" - the crime boss - and not really three-dimensional.

Director Jean-Francois Richet has some very elegant moving camera moments and adds some rather nice touches to the work. At moments in the early going of the film, it feels like we're watching Goodfellas. We see the back-room deals that run the crime world and see the access that criminals have in Paris (especially with pimps and whores). What follows is mostly fun, but it's all over the place and hard to follow. I would hope the second film will have a bit more structure and a bit more insight. At least it will have a lot more Ludivine Sagnier. Thank god for that!

Stars: 2 of 4

Centurion (Monday, August 16, 2010) (105)

For my entire life I have always wanted to be able to use the word "pictish" in a sentence. Thank goodness for the movie Centurion that I am finally able to do that!


This film is in the second century A.D. as the Romans are beginning to lose their control of Britain. They are fighting the Pict people, native to the middle-to-upper part of that island, and are losing badly. The 9th Legion is the last effort by Rome to push north, but they are severely routed by the Picts who are more familiar with the environment.


Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender) is one of the last officers left from the regiment (the singular eponymous centurion) and he has to hightail it out of the Pictish land and back to the newly constructed Hadrian's Wall. On the way he is joined by a handful of Roman soldiers as well as an outcast Pict lady (who is totally hot!).


The film is sorta high-level popcorn fun. There is nothing particularly brilliant about it, but also nothing really terrible either. It's incredibly violent and bloody (writer/director Neil Marshall comes from the world of slasher thrillers) and it's not uncommon here to see heads chopped off or smashed in, or eyeballs gouged out with sticks.


I have become a big fan of Michael Fassbender, from his work last year in Hungar (one of the best films of 2009) as well as his very troubling, interesting role in this year's Fish Tank. He is quietly confident and immediately likable. I think his character is written a bit light (with a focus more on his brawn than on his brains), but this is clearly Marshall's fault and not his own.


This is a fun, gory twist on a more typical "sandals and swords" flick. It is a modestly sized film (even the battle scenes seem to have fewer extras than many movies from this genre), which I appreciate. Again, there is nothing amazing here - and it's certainly not something that one needs to rush out to see - but what it does, it does well enough.


Pictish. (I just wanted to be able to write that again.)


Stars: 2.5 of 4

Valhalla Rising (Saturday, July 17, 2010) (78)

I am a big fan of Nicolas Winding Refn's film Bonson from 2009. For that reason alone, I went to see Valhalla Rising, which looked like a big piece of shit in the trailers I saw beforehand. Well, I should learn a less and believe my eyes more than the past work of a filmmaker because this film is even more of a turd than I expected it to be.

There is basically no story here, but what I can best make out is that there is a guy named One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), who is a tattooed slave in what might be England or Scotland or Scandinavia (with British accents) in the middle ages, who comes from a world of horrible violence. He escapes is current owners and kills them all. Then a young boy comes over and begins to follow him. At some point they meet a group of guys who are going to the Holy Land on a crusade. He follows them for awhile too. Then some more people die in extremely violent and bloody ways.

Throughout the story One Eye has weird fractured flashbacks to extreme violence he has seen in his life and visions of the world through a red filter (which I guess means something about blood). There is a lot of nothing going on too. We see people staring off into the distance blankly and then we see vast natural expanses or waterscapes with nothing going on. This gets pretty tedious.

The photography, by Morten Søborg is actually wonderful and looks very blue-green throughout. It is always foggy and gray, but there are glimpses of wonderful colors. If these plastic images don't do anything emotionally or story-wise, at least they look nice.

I really feel like I'm missing something with this film. It almost comes off as an art piece, more than a narrative, but I don't think that on purpose. I think it just has a bad script and bad execution without any of the poetry or beauty of his earlier work.

Stars: 1 of 4

Dogtooth (Saturday, June 26, 2010) (57)

More than a movie *about* anything, Dogtooth is really an artistic exercise, as much about the medium and about art itself than anything else.

The film focuses on a middle-class Greek family who live in the remote suburbs outside of town. The film opens with the three kids, all in their late teens listening to a tape recording of new vocabulary words. The "sea" is an armchair; a "motor way" is a really strong wind (later we see that a "telephone" is a salt shaker). Then the kids then devise a game where they hold a finger under the hot water and the last person to remove it will win. "What will we call this game?," asks one of them. The sister who has invented the game looks blankly at the floor. She has no idea what the game would be called.

This play with definitions, naming things and people and control of language is the central point of this film. The parents have set out a world where their kids are kept in the house and the small yard of the estate and told that on the outside of the wall are horrible, violent "cats" that will kill and eat them. They have no access to anything other than exactly what their parents give to them. No access to language, ideas or dreams. The parents have told them that they can leave the house when one of their dogteeth (canines) comes out. Of course, being the age they are, this is unlikely to happen ever. The kids seem to have been socialized to be dogs, rather than humans.

The father brings a woman over to have sex with the son. It seems this is part of his training as a man (to be a sexually dominant being) and also, possibly, a way to keep him in line (it might otherwise be tough to control a hormonal 19-year-old young man). This woman doesn't ask questions and plays along with some of the kids weird games. When she starts trading things from the outside world, uncontrolled things, with the older sister, the strict rules of the house start to go out of whack.

This is a totally fascinating post-modern experiment. The interplay between what the kids know from their parents and what they can make up themselves is wonderful. The idea that they can remain at the developmental level of young children without the influences of culture or society is shocking and pretty convincing.

The parents are cruel in their ways, and there are several suggestions that the father is prone to acts of violence. As a result, the children interact with one another frequently in violent ways. Just as sex is disassociated from it's cultural mores, violence has no position on a scale of right and wrong. Everything is OK as long as it's done inside the house - a world built up and protected by the parents.

This split between a thing and the meaning of a word that describes it (the sign and the symbol, as semiologists would say) is fascinating, not only because it tells an interesting story in the film, but also because of how we react to it as viewers. Is cutting someone with a knife across the arm necessarily a bad thing if the people involved in the act don't know it's bad? If a person doesn't have a name, is their existence different from those with names? Is incest bad if there is no concept of brother/sisterhood and social convention?

Director (and co-writer) Giorgos Lanthimos does a brilliant job of separating film convention from the core of the presentation format. There is no score, there are almost no moving shots. Scenes play out in full, generally with one static camera before being cut away, rendering editing almost totally unnecessary.

The result is a beautiful, tight piece that has almost nothing more than pure story-advancing material. Much of what we see is pretty funny, though we are basically laughing at the people onscreen, rather than laughing with them (the parents are certainly not funny people and the children don't seen to know what humor is).

I think this is another important part of the experiment: we laugh at things that make us uncomfortable (in this case, weird, disassociated violence or weird misunderstandings of people who can't comprehend most of what they experience). We do this because we understand the whole context of things and where an outlier fits in (or doesn't fit in) to that situation. These kids, for instance, only see a very small view of things that have been specifically explained to them. Part of why they don't laugh more is because they don't know enough to know when something is not totally right.

I have enjoyed thinking about this film and breaking down the meaning of parts. There is a lot of fun and interesting material to work with. I will say, though, that there is somewhat of a limit to the depth of meaning I can find. It might be fun to examine the mother's role, say, in the development of the kids, or to look at why the parents might do this in the first place. Unfortunately there are not a lot of answers to these questions, because the material presented is so limited, the film is just so tight.

This is a difficult piece to be sure - but I really enjoyed it. It's weirdness is what's great about it. It constantly surprising us and shocking us with unexpected things. It's really a brilliant work of art.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

The Killer Inside Me (Saturday, June 19, 2010) (53)

The Killer Inside Me, directed by Michael Winterbottom and based on the novel by Jim Thompson, is the story of Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a tightly wound small-town deputy sheriff who gets into a relationship with a local whore Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba). It seems that several men in town are also having affairs with her, including rich oilman Chester Conway (Ned Beatty). Ford also has a beautiful fiance Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson) who seems to need more love and attention than he is willing to give her. When Lou strikes out in a violent, misogynistic, cruel streak, killing several people, his life beings to collapse and his options close in on him.

Strange misogynistic violence and weird sex has never really done it for me. From a pure story-telling view, this film goes from pretty normal and quiet to pretty loud and wild in a split second with basically no warning (aside from knowing that any story that comes from Jim Thompson's brain should devolve into blood and gore). In the first half-hour, Lou is a pretty normal guy who does like kinky sex (asphyxiation, spanking, etc.), but seems like a pretty nice guy. I don't like how Winterbottom turns the story to violence so quickly.

I think this format celebrates Lou's horribleness by making it more shocking than it would be if we were better prepared for it, possibly by planting a few more seeds early on. He seems to fetishize Lou's sickness. There is no context or background given for why Lou would do the things he does - it's just that he's a bad seed or something. This isn't really very artistic even - it's just pure unassociated violence.

Casey Affleck, who I normally love, seems a bit dead behind his eyes here. I don't really see much motivation for his actions and he seems to coast along strangely quietly with moments of action. Clearly this is a choice between Winterbottom and Affleck, but it seems a bit shallow to me - a bit harder to decipher.

Perhaps the director's biggest achievement is that he gets two pretty solid performances out of both actresses, both of whom I think are terrible at their so-called craft. Both Hudson and Alba are very good as two confused women who try to do what they can for their mad lover, but can never communicate effectively with him. I don't know where either of them got this performance (neither one has been anywhere close to this level of execution in the past), but they deserve credit for jobs well done.

The overall look of the film is typically yellow and brown and mostly burnt out - as one would expect from a story taking place in West Texas. The cinematographer, and past Winterbottom collaborator Marcel Zyskind, does a nice job, but it's a bit tired. Yes - everything looks properly faded and old, but it's all a bit trite. Yes - it's in West Texas; yes, it's brown and faded. Bah!

The film feels like a limp story hanging on the skeleton of unexplainable ultra-violence and cruelty. There's no way of approaching this story and understanding it. Lou is sick and acts without boundaries. I don't think there's much of a deeper level to his actions other than just that he's nuts. The rest of the characters around him either are there as foils for his rage. There is too much detail in the story outside of him, and basically none of it is interesting at all.

Stars: 1.5 of 4

Kick-Ass (Saturday, April 18, 2010) (30)

In Kick-Ass, Dave Lizewski (played by Aaron Johnson) is a dorky high school kid who has a small group of friends that treat him like crap and can't get a girl to speak to him, let alone date him, to save his life. After getting mugged one night and having his nervous system changed so he feels basically no pain (OK - it's a stretch, but go with it), he buys a costume online and becomes a super hero, Kick-Ass, who stands up to criminals.

The main villain in his town is mob boss, Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong) whose son Chris (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) is in Dave's class and seems to be more of a geek than Dave. Frank's criminal operation is being threatened by a mysterious masked super-hero who apparently looks like Batman- or so say the guys who are beat up by him.

It turns out they're not far off. Damon Macready (Nick Cage) is a former cop who now works with his daughter, Mindy (Chloe Moretz), as a crime-fighting superhero duo, Big Daddy and Hit-Girl. Big Daddy looks and talks just like Batman (at least the Christian Bale iteration of him). The pair realize that Kick-Ass is a good ally in their fight against crime in the city - and against D'Amico more specifically. Together, with no super powers, but a lot of guts and money, they take on the bad guys.

For me the most fun of the film is the freshness and tongue-in-cheek tone of the story. It's sarcastic throughout and knows well what its doing. Dave is a big fan of comic books and is a dork - so when he becomes Kick-Ass and gets his ass kicked (there are a bunch of lines in the script that make this joke), it's particularly funny because it feels realistic even as over-the-top as it is.

There is no doubt that the story takes place in our world - or a very close world to ours. Kick-Ass makes a name for himself through a viral video circulated online of him getting beat up. Big Daddy and Hit-Girl buy a hover-pack loaded with guns online with a credit card and joke about how they're going to pay for it. When Chris D'Amico becomes a super hero himself (to foil Kick-Ass) his action figures and t-shirts take over prime real-estate in the comic book shop, pushing the Kick-Ass gear to the sale table. (One thing that is disappointing is that the film is clearly shot in Toronto, though it is supposed to be New York City. Either more effort should have gone into masking the location or no city name should have been given.)

The film is somewhat reminiscent of Mystery Men, another story of losers who become ad hoc super heroes. But it's better than that. That tried to walk the line between kids movie and grown-up comedy. This is totally an adult movie and is really only tied to kids movies because the general genre is 'comic book movie'. This is not a movie for kids.

The story is fun, but it is a bit too complicated and too long. There are about three layers to the story, which is perfect for launching a franchise with tons of sequels, but a bit too much for a small movie like this to support. Big Daddy's back-story was explained but never really examined and seems a bit of an unnecessary appendage in this context. It might come out more clearly after a sequel comes out, but was not totally needed here.

Despite the screenplay, director Matthew Vaughn does a nice job with the material he has. He pulls no punches with blood and action, getting Dave stabbed and beat up badly without flinching. Young Mindy says words that you would never want and 11-year-old to say - and she does so without any apologies. He also uses a rock 'n' roll soundtrack brilliantly to heighten tension, wink at the knowing audience and joke about the content. There might not be a better use of Ennio Morricone or Elvis than in the final sequence of this film.

The acting throughout is very good. Aaron Johnson is very good as a dork who we can all sympathize with. He's a good guy who doesn't know exactly why he is seen as a dork. Chloe Moretz is great in a role that seems older than she would otherwise be playing. She steals the show with her great delivery of vulgar dialogue. Christopher Mintz-Plasse is basically the same guy as he was in Superbad, Fogell/McLovin, the dork who is cooler than you are. Nick Cage is as wooden as always here - but it sorta works for this role. (Again, I'm not sure if he's a really bad actor or a brilliant one.)

Kick-Ass is a raw, grown-up comedy and not a kids comic book movie. It's a fun ride filled with tons of funny, dirty language and some blood and violence (though it's not nearly as violent as some have suggested). It needs about a half-hour cut out of it, but I thought it was a lot of fun.

Stars: 2.5 of 4

Terribly Happy (Friday, February 5, 2010) (10)

This film is a Danish western, set in the western part of Denmark. It is a quite brilliant modern story that makes clever references to classic Westerns of Anthony Mann, John Ford and Howard Hawks. It is clearly visually inspired by David Lynch and the Coen Brothers, but has its own interesting style that makes it appear to be totally fresh and original.

Robert is a big city cop who is being disciplined after a big screw up. He's sent to a godforsaken town at the edge or civilization to become the new sheriff. This unusual town has only a few dozen residents, a doctor, a grocer, a pastor, a hair dresser and, of course, a bar. All of these people are dominated by Jorgen, the town tough who wears a cowboy hat, rules with an iron fist (almost literally) and takes care of people who get out of line. The fate of most who cross him is the bog outside of town where people can be disappeared in the mud without any evidence.

As Robert learns his way around and learns the politics of unusual town, he meets Ingerlise, Jorgen's wife and live-in punching bag. She's frustrated with her life and interested by Robert and seeks help from him for her situation. Little does he know that trying to help this sad woman will lead him deeper in the madness of this town, where everyone knows everyone's business and knows the rules that govern the place.

Writer/director Henrik Ruben Genz does a wonderful job of weaving a story that's familiar enough to recognize classic western threads (like the new sheriff in town meeting the old thug or the town doc who knows everyone's secrets but can't do anything about it, or the complicity of the townsfolk in the misery of others who sit back and judge from afar) but makes them contemporary enough to make them interesting. He uses a wonderful style with mostly static shots, beautifully filled up frames and amazing color to make what seems like a bleak setting come alive. The townspeople are always sweaty (and filthy) despite the bitter cold outside.

The photography by Jorgen Johansson looks a lot like the work that Roger Deakins has done for the Coen brothers, particularly for films like A Serious Man and Fargo; the music by Kaare Bjerko is a simple minimalist guitar and feels a lot like music Carter Burwell has written for them as well. Overall the style is gentle and peaveful, which belies the grime and violence the is at the heart of the town.

Jakob Cedergren is wonderful as Robert and is a perfect proxy for us. He's clearly a trouble man trying to escape his past - as much he's being sent to this place as punishment. He seems to have a good heart and is always doing things by the book (and even saying exactly that as he does those things). He's as mystified by the people and things he sees as we are and he responds in mostly sensible ways the way we might respond in a similar situation.

Of course the problem is that doing things by the police book is not the same thing as doing things by the book according to this town and these people. Henry Fonda's Wyatt Earp from My Darling Clementine or Clint Eastwood's Stranger in High Plains Drifter come to mind as we see Robert, an outsider, come to put some sense in this town that doesn't really want him.

Stars: 3.5 of 4