In no particular order:

A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF AMERICAN EMPIRE BY HOWARD ZINN: I haven’t seen anybody on the comical interwebs really discuss this at all, but I picked it up yesterday and it’s really very good; it’s meant to be a more easily read and accessible version of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and mostly succeeds. It’s not funny or cute, but it’s compelling and hits its points thoroughly, and the occasional divergences into sorta-memoir by Zinn (acting as the book’s narrator) give it a nice personal touch. Also, it’s pretty cheap considering the size of the book. Recommended. (SPOILER: Woodrow Wilson is a Skrull.)

IRON MAN THE MOVIE: Excellent, probably better than any superhero movie in recent memory other than maybe Batman Begins. By this point you’ve already read at least two dozen glowing reviews all saying the same things, so I will simply add my two cents and mention that what far and away got the most enthusiastic reception out of my audience was Tony Stark’s robots in his lab – biggest laughs, biggest cheers, biggest “wows” all went to Tony, in his lab, building the suit with the funny robots. This continues to confirm my theory that the best superhero movies have some form of comic relief in them, usually a sidekick, or as I like to call it, Alfred-Gets-All-The-Best-Lines-Syndrome.

DC UNIVERSE NUMBER ZERO: I wouldn’t have paid fifty cents for what’s essentially an advertising flyer even if it is written by Grant Morrison, but I got a copy for free. And… it’s an advertising flyer written by Grant Morrison. Worse, it’s an advertising flyer that’s really, really bad at advertising its product to the supposed new readers to which a comic sampler thingy like this should be advertising. If I had no idea what was going on in the comics, this sampler thing would not help in the slightest. Heck, I read some issues of Grant Morrison’s Batman and I’m still not sure what “Batman, RIP” is about, other than the obvious. Ditto the Wonder Woman thing. And I only understand the “Legion of Three Worlds” teaser because I’m a giant DC nerd; were I not, it would be as impenetrable as all the rest, albeit with George Perez art making it at least tolerable.

BRINGING BACK BARRY ALLEN: My word, it’s like comics are being written by and for people essentially opposed to change!

Incidentally, on a related note, will people stop saying things like “the new storytelling model on Flash is terrible and doesn’t work?” Because it’s not true; it’s a direct lift from The Incredibles, which is one of the best and most successful superhero movies ever, and if you’re going to argue otherwise then tell me with a straight face that you would skip Return of the Incredibles, Trial of the Incredibles and The Incredibles Versus The New Superions. The new concept on Flash is just fine, and honestly it’s not like the comics post-Wally’s-return have been bad; they’re just tainted by DC completely mishandling the franchise for the better part of a year and a half. “Wally And His Super Family” is a good idea.

(People seem to forget that Flash: The Fastest Man Alive was easily one of the worst single runs of comics in the last decade if not longer: mean-spirited, incoherent, ugly, boring and just the antithesis of fun. Fans were stoked for a new, bold reign on Flash, which is why the debut sold so high, and then they dropped it in droves because it was total dogshit. I’d say it’s now the textbook example of how to actively destroy a fanbase.)

SATURN GIRL TALKING DIRTY: A minor kerfuffle over this at Chris Sims’ joint, where some people said “god, that’s creepy” and other people said “wait, a girl expressing sexual desire is creepy?” Which of course misses the point, because it’s a superhero comic which is ostensibly marketed to all ages last I checked, even if that’s only a convenient fiction at this point in time, and in an all-ages work of fiction, yes, it’s a little bit creepy, because even if it is PG-ish in actual vocabulary it’s R-ish in spirit.

Let me put it this way: if ostensibly romantic dialogue would sound creepy in, say, an episode of Gilmore Girls, it will probably be somewhat out of place in a superhero funnybook. That’s all I’m saying.

SECRET INVASION: So far, so good. Yes, it’s a wildly silly concept that requires a lot of handwaving to work (I particularly appreciated the scene in New Avengers where the Skrulls explained their newfound ability to transform and be totally undetectable by any means available with a short speech basically summing up with “well, we used science a lot!”), but so what, these are superhero comics and the point of the sausage is not how is it made, but that it is delicious with mustard. And Secret Invasion thus far is hitting what it needs to hit, which is little green men invading in dangerously sneaky ways and creating an enjoyably paranoid atmosphere.

SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

BIGWIG: All right. As you know, today is Number Two’s birthday. Do not giggle, Number One.
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: …but… so funny…
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Deep breaths. Come on.
BIGWIG: Yes. As it is his birthday, and I have an opening in my slate – don’t giggle, Number One –
FIRST: Aw.
BIGWIG: Ahem. As it is his birthday, we are going to allow him to pitch an idea wholly and entirely on his own, and after we work it through, we will make it. Are you ready, Two?
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I am pumped and primed and ready to go, sir.
BIGWIG: Good. Hit me.
SECOND: So there’s this whore –
THIRD: Oh, come on!
BIGWIG: Now, now, Three. We don’t interrupt. Remember your last birthday, we didn’t interrupt you, and what did you end up getting me to greenlight?
THIRD: Lars and the Real Girl.
BIGWIG: Do you remember how hard it was to keep Two from interrupting? So now you will be quiet. It is his turn.
SECOND: Thank you, sir.
BIGWIG: Not at all. Continue.
SECOND: So there’s this whore, and she’s turns twenty-seven, so she’s too worn out to be a quality prostitute like guys like.
BIGWIG: …is this a character detail, or…?
SECOND: Oh, no, no. This motivates the plot.
BIGWIG: Ah. And this is a drama, I take it?
SECOND: I was thinking wacky comedy.
THIRD: Oh –
BIGWIG: Ut! Not yet. Continue telling us about your wacky comedy.
SECOND: So our hooker needs a new job, so she becomes a den mother for a group of outcast girls at some good college somewhere.
BIGWIG: All right, that sounds –
SECOND: And she helps them become cool by teaching them how to act like whores.
The BIGWIG glances at THIRD.
BIGWIG: Oh, all right.
THIRD: Are you insane? That’s the most offensive thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life!
FIRST: What about that time we had Joe Francis in here to talk about a fictionalized movie version of the “Girls Gone Wild” videos? You were really offended then –
THIRD: Okay, second most offended.
FIRST: And then there was the time –
THIRD: Yes, yes, okay, look, this at least makes top ten.
SECOND: I haven’t even gotten to the subplot with the priggish evil den mother yet! Come on! I didn’t say anything when you told us about the movie with the sex dolls, and you know the movie would have been better with a six-doll orgy!
BIGWIG: This is a good point. The birthday pitch has to be given fair consideration. However, may I suggest a few changes?
SECOND: Of course.
BIGWIG: Instead of a prostitute, let us make her a Playboy Bunny.
FIRST: With floppy ears!
THIRD: Kind of.
FIRST: And we’ll give her some lettuce!
THIRD: Not that type of bunny.
BIGWIG: If she is a Playboy Bunny, we can get a pretty actress nearing thirty to play the lead and the fact that she is still pretty will underscore the comic aspects of her not being allowed to be a Playboy Bunny any longer.
FIRST: Maybe we can even get an actress over thirty!
BIGWIG: Don’t be stupid. We will also get a bunch of hot young actresses to play the outcast girls so that the heroine can make them into hot sexy Playboy Bunnies as well. It’ll be just like it was in She’s All That. They will wear glasses, then they will take off the glasses and become hot and sexy.
THIRD: And the rest of the plot?
BIGWIG: We keep it as is. We’ll introduce a love interest for the heroine so she can be reformed into polite society, of course.
SECOND: I thought she should remain a whore in my original notes, but I guess I can bend with it.
THIRD: Aren’t you concerned about the message this sends? That women can only be happy and popular if they’re pretty?
BIGWIG: Because I was so deeply concerned about the social message sent by four consecutive Steven Seagal action movies in my prime? Come on now.
THIRD: Sir, i seriously think a movie like this will backfire on us. There’ll be a social outcry.
BIGWIG: Repeat after me: “we’re just using the basic plot elements of Revenge of the Nerds, except that this time, the nerds are girls.” Anybody complains, we keep repeating that until they shut up. Now let’s go get this made.
FIRST: I can’t wait for my birthday. I have this idea where Batman fights Popeye in outer space.
All are silent.
BIGWIG: Work on it some more, kid.

When 24 first debuted, everybody was making a huge deal about it being a story told in real time (well, except for Keifer Sutherland never having to go to the bathroom or anything like that), because it was, in fairness, something of a novelty.

Mostly because nobody had seen Nick of Time. It absolutely bombed in theatres and didn’t do much better on home video, which is a shame because it’s a really good little thriller which nowadays should be something that gets more notoriety, seeing as how it stars Johnny Depp at a point after Depp was a name but slightly before Depp became a bona fide leading man for action movies.

And it has Christopher Walken as the crazy-ass bad guy. This is good Walken, the sort of Walken role where in addition to being some variety of kooky there’s also weight to the role. All too frequently, Walken’s oft-stated tendency to take absolutely any script that comes his way in order for the paycheque comes to the fore: consider Balls of Fury, Domino, Click, or Man of the Year (and that’s just the lowlights of the last three years). However, every so often Walken gets to be in a decent movie where he can be heartwarmingly off-kilter (Hairspray, Catch Me If You Can) or freaky and otherworldly (The Prophecy, Sleepy Hollow), or, at best, terrifyingly and criminally strange (True Romance, Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead).

In Nick of Time, Walken gets to be a completely amoral mercenary who likes to tell stories. I am sure your appetite is now whetted.

The plot of Nick of Time is quite simple, if contrived: Walken, representative of a shadowy conspiracy, selects Depp at the train station when he sees Depp with his young daughter to kill the Governor of California (a totally awesome Marsha Mason). Walken and his partner (played with equal badassedness by Roma Maffia) take the girl hostage. If, in ninety minutes, the Governor isn’t dead (with the gun they give him), they kill his daughter.

It’s a ridiculous premise, of course, but director John Badham (who these days, after having directed classics like Saturday Night Fever and WarGames, is apparently just directing episodes of second-tier television programs, sad to say) plays it absolutely straight and never lets the viewer lose suspension of disbelief – making sure that clocks are near-constantly in frame to remind the audience that time is ticking away (and the fact that the movie is in real time just reinforces the tension), regularly framing the action through video cameras (held by operatives of the shadowy conspiracy, who plan to use the tape of Depp running around looking frantic and nervous as proof that he was clearly a crazed assassin), and using the narrow halls of the hotel where practically the entire film takes place as befits the paranoid feeling of the film.

The dialogue between Depp and Walken crackles; Depp plays desperate straight man to Walken’s crazy rant master. And although the plot is ludicrous, the payoff at the end is tight with not an ounce of narrative flab. Plus, you get to cheer for Charles S. Dutton, and who wouldn’t want to cheer for Roc?

From comments yesterday:

I just thought I’d bring forth this little piece of horror:

“G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. The property is closer in tone to X-Men and James Bond than a war film.”

Yeah, I’ve already seen some right-wing blogs complain about this, although it’s probably a bit exaggerated – my guess would be that the movie will feature an international-ish task force but not be headquartered in Brussels. (I mean, come on – it’s Brussels.)

But. Two things.

Firstly, prior to the Real American Hero rebranding in the early 1980s, G.I. Joe was marketed all over the world (most notably as Action Man in England), so the concept doesn’t necessarily have a purely American origin. (Granted, the Real American Hero version is what inspired the movie, but even so.)

Secondly, what the hell did people expect? The American military isn’t as popular as it was during the 1980s (when G.I. Joe as we know it was wildly popular among kids of many nations) and the international film market has been bigger than the American film market for quite a while now. G.I. Joe in straight-up Real American Hero mode might as well be titled “three-quarters of potential worldwide profit gone before the first trailer even airs” and save the accountants some time.

Welcome to the global marketplace. If Americans want to have an economy where all they export is cultural product (and I think that’s kind of a bad idea, really, but hey: it’s your economy), then part of that strategy involves producing cultural product the rest of the world will want to buy. And if that means toning down the jingoism, guess what – Hollywood is a business, and they like making money, and if not putting a flag on everything in sight makes them money, then maybe – just maybe – they will do that.

Now I know everybody has a geek hard-on from seeing those pictures of Ray Park dressed up as Snake-Eyes for the new live-action G.I. Joe movie coming out next year.

This is understandable, because Snake-Eyes is awesome, one of the very few untarnished, perfect elements of childhood, and these things are rare and grow ever rarer as time passes and Hollywood recycles itself more and more. I mean, Optimus Prime was badly tarnished last year by the terrible Transformers movie. (Not ruined, because you can’t ruin Optimus Prime that easily, not so long as Peter Cullen is providing the voice.)

But Ray Park as Snake-Eyes, while undeniably and obviously the part of the G.I. Joe movie that will rule the most, is unfortunately only one part. I mean, Ray Park as Darth Maul was pretty fucking awesome too, but that doesn’t mean Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was particularly good. Just as for every Darth Maul there is a Jar-Jar, so too for every Snake-Eyes there must be a Chuckles, for every Shipwreck a Lt. Falcon, for every Wild Bill a Quick Kick.

Now, looking at the cast list, there are some good choices (Arnold Vosloo as Zartan, Christopher Eccleston as Destro), some interesting ones (Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander? Said “plays the terrorist character in every movie ever” Taghmaoui as Breaker?), some downright weird ones (the guy who played Mr. Eko on Lost as… Heavy Duty, rather than Roadblock or Stalker?), and some entirely predictable ones (Scarlett and the Baroness played by wholly replaceable non-entity actresses, I am shocked I tell you). So far, pretty par for the course.

And then I see it.

Marlon Wayans as Ripcord.

Oh my.

Remember the last time Marlon Wayans was in a movie featuring a property which nerds had been eagerly awaiting to see in live-action form for decades?

Yeah, I think you remember.

At one point, a long time ago, Dabney Coleman was the king shit.

You have to understand that at this time, Dabney Coleman was the definition of irascible authority figure. If you needed a tough bastard who deep down (often very very deep down) had a heart of gold, Dabney Coleman was your first and only choice. (Well, unless Howard Hesseman was available, but let’s face it, Howard Hesseman carries with him a streak of anti-authoritarianism that sometimes fails to work in establishment roles.)

But sometimes, you gotta stretch a bit.

Cloak and Dagger is perhaps one of the biggest stretches of all time in another sense, seeing as how it is loosely – very, very loosely – themed around the Atari arcade game of the same name. You might be thinking that making a movie after a popular game is no big deal, what with this being the era of Doom and Resident Evil and presumably other video game movies, possibly some of which don’t even have zombies in them. However, again, I feel the need to stress that this was an Atari video game, and it’s not like they made a movie out of Asteroids or Donkey Kong.

Wait, they made Super Mario Brothers, and that’s kind of like a Donkey Kong movie. I retract my previous statement.

Regardless. Considering that the Cloak and Dagger videogame did not, as such, have a plot, the screenwriters basically went apeshit and put the actual video game in the movie as a plot element, using it to smuggle important spy document sorts of things. Henry Thomas (Elliot in E.T.) stars as the kid hero who daydreams of being a super-spy, adventuring alongside his hero, super-spy (and star of both roleplaying game and video game) Jack Flack. And of course, his ludicrous adventures turn awry when he actually stumbles upon a real spy conspiracy – and of course nobody believes him.

And Coleman – Coleman plays a double role, and it’s a brilliant turn – as both the boy’s father and as his fantasy of Jack Flack. The two roles play off each other perfectly, the sober responsibility of the father contrasting in just about every way with Ideal Boyhood Companion (and pretty much insane) Flack; Coleman switches roles easily and smoothly, never letting Flack and Dad coincide, even for a moment – which works out perfectly when Flack turns out to be, unsurprisingly, pretty much useless for anything serious and Dad has to go full-on enraged papa bear to save his son from the actual real terrorists.

It’s an excellent family movie, and one of the few good family-appropriate thrillers extant period. (It’s not exactly a genre that gets a lot of play, after all.) It’s exciting on its own merits, frequently a little bit scary (and I am a firm believer that there is nothing wrong with family movies being a bit scary). And it has Dabney Coleman in it. What more could you ask?

SCENE: A STUDIO BIGWIG and his three JUNIOR EXECUTIVES sit at a table.

STUDIO BIGWIG: Gentlemen, I just wanted to give you your due. The Hottie and the Nottie will just barely break even without making a profit. Number one, your slate of Dane Cook romantic comedies for the next two years is awe-inspiring. Number two, your decision to cast Nicole Kidman in The Golden Compass and thus draw any element of human compassion out of the movie ended the threat of a Philip Pullman-based movie franchise. And number three… well, you kept number one from eating gravel that one time.
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I thought it was rock salt.
SECOND JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: Why would you want to eat rock salt?
FIRST JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: I wanted to eat something cubical.
THIRD JUNIOR EXECUTIVE: He did.
BIGWIG: Regardless, gentlemen, this is no time for us to rest on our laurels. We have to press forward and make enormous amounts of money without generating a profit on the books. And to this end, I have signed Mike Myers to a live-action movie deal.
(Silence.)
THIRD: The Shrek guy.
FIRST: Oh, him! I love it when he makes the ogre fart.
SECOND: Right, right. So what do we do with him?
BIGWIG: Myers has expressed interest in an idea he calls The Love Swami. In this, he plays a swami from India –
THIRD: Wait, Mike Myers is going to play a swami?
BIGWIG: Or something like that, yes.
THIRD: He’s not exactly… Indian-looking.
BIGWIG: Oh, good heavens. He’s not going to play an Indian. That would be racist.
THIRD: Good.
BIGWIG: Instead, he will play a white man who was raised in India and thus talks and acts funny just like an Indian would and plays up all the cultural stereotypes, but it’s not racist because we acknowledge that he’s white and therefore we’re embracing the wonderful diversity of the world.
FIRST: Remember what we learned in business school? “If your lead is white, then it’s all right.”
THIRD: What business school did you go to?
FIRST: I don’t remember the name, but we got free milkshakes every day and there was a clown.
THIRD: That sounds less like business school and more like working at a McDonald’s.
FIRST: Possibly!
SECOND: Getting back to Myers… so he’s a swami. Heh. That sounds dirty. “Love swami.”
(The BIGWIG eyes SECOND suspiciously.)
BIGWIG: You have a point. He is no longer a swami. He is now a guru.
SECOND: Aww…
BIGWIG: Anyway. He is a guru and he comes to America to teach Americans about guru things, and the Toronto Maple Leafs hire him to –
THIRD: Wait, wait. He comes to America and the Toronto Maple Leafs hire him for something?
BIGWIG: Yeah – Myers wants to use the Leafs in his movie, he’s a fan.
THIRD: But Toronto isn’t in America.
BIGWIG: What percentage of our target audience will both know that and care?
THIRD: Never mind.
BIGWIG: You’re learning. So, he comes to America and the Toronto Maple Leafs hire him to counsel one of their players. We will need a young, up-and-coming black actor –
THIRD: We’re getting a black actor to play a professional hockey player?
BIGWIG: Is this another “accuracy” thing?
THIRD: Well, technically it’s not wrong, since there are a few black hockey players. It’s just a bit odd. Most hockey players are, you know. White.
FIRST: That makes our movie even more not racist, then, because we’re making somebody who normally would be white instead be black!
SECOND: We’re challenging preconceptions!
FIRST: Shaking up the thought-box!
SECOND: Making waves!
FIRST: Confronting our inner Hamburglars!
BIGWIG: Precisely.
SECOND: Besides, if you have an athlete in a movie he usually has to be black, because black people are athletic.
THIRD: Oh, god.
BIGWIG: However, right now all I have for a proposal other than that basic idea is five pages of scribbling from Myers about how he wants to make his dead father proud of him by making the same sorts of comedy movies his dead father loved.
SECOND: Wow. Issues.
BIGWIG: The last page is just “I love you, Daddy” written over and over again. I think he may have been crying while he wrote it. So we need to flesh this movie out a bit more. Ideas?
FIRST: Mini-Me! We need Mini-Me!
THIRD: It’s not an Austin Powers movie.
FIRST: So what? We can throw Mini-Me –
THIRD: – Verne Troyer –
FIRST: – we can throw Mini-Me into the script and Myers can make a lot of jokes about Mini-Me being very short!
BIGWIG: Interesting. I like it. It does what has already been done many times, and I like doing things which have already made us a lot of money. We will hire him immediately. Next idea.
SECOND: This movie needs a love interest. The Love Guru needs somebody to fuck. Then we can make a lot of jokes about titties and erections.
BIGWIG: I am sure Mike Myers would like to make jokes about those things. Who can we get on short notice?
SECOND: Please. Jessica Alba. Please.
THIRD: She can’t act and has the comic timing of a dead frog.
SECOND: Yes, but she has a fantastic ass.
THIRD: But –
SECOND: Nobody’s going to go see this movie for the love interest! They’re going to go see a movie where Mike Myers, who is a giant schlump, gets to fuck Jessica Alba!
BIGWIG: Good reasoning.
SECOND: And then he comes on her face and calls her a dirty whore.
BIGWIG: I think we’ll skip that part.
SECOND: Aww…
THIRD: Oh, incidentally, Justin Timberlake’s agent called us last week; he’s interested in working on a silly comedy. This would seem to fit the bill. Should we call him and sign him?
BIGWIG: Very proactive of you! But what will he do in the movie?
FIRST: He can talk with a funny accent!
THIRD: Isn’t Mike Myers already going to be talking with an accent?
FIRST: Yes, I know, I meant a different funny accent. Wait, this is a movie about hockey and stuff, right?
THIRD: I lost track some time ago.
FIRST: So he can talk with a Quebec accent! He can say things like “tabernac,” and we can give him a 70s porn moustache because everybody in Quebec has one of those.
BIGWIG: Do they?
FIRST: That’s what my mother told me.
BIGWIG: Well, I’m sure she wouldn’t lie. But a funny accent is only a start. We also need to give him a comedic shtick.
SECOND: …he has a giant cock!
THIRD: He has a giant cock. This is funny.
SECOND: Yes!
BIGWIG: Maybe we can work on it a bit, but it’s not the worst comedic hook I’ve ever heard.
SECOND: Then he fucks Jessica Alba and calls her a dirty whore.
THIRD: What the hell is your problem?
SECOND: I just like prostitutes.
BIGWIG: Regardless. Gentlemen, i think we have the concept wrapped up here. I’ll send it down to the writers and we’ll get this thing done.
FIRST: Hooray! Time for rock salt!
THIRD: …that’s gravel again.

(SCENE: The local multiplex. Enter MYSELF and my ROOMMATE, who has requested anonymity for the purposes of this post, and so shall be known as FLAPJACKS. We sit in anticipation of watching 10,000 BC, which we are certain is going to be very, very bad.)

ME: Okay, here we go.
FLAPJACKS: I am stoked.
ME: Be aware that at any point we can theatre-hop over next door if we can’t stands no more.
FLAPJACKS: What are they playing?
ME: College Road Trip.
FLAPJACKS: Isn’t that with Martin Lawrence?
ME: Yes.
FLAPJACKS: …let’s stay here for now.

(VOICE OF OMAR SHARIF begins narrating.)

ME: So there’s apparently a legend that never dies.
FLAPJACKS: Which died, but then Roland Emmerich went on an archeological dig and found stone tablets telling the amazing story and he brought it to life.
ME: A timeless story of true love, and mammoths.
FLAPJACKS: But not true love with mammoths.
ME: Although apparently in this story mammoths are called “manniks.”
FLAPJACKS: It’s so we know that these are old-timey times. The tribesmen speak perfect English, but they have different names for things. Because it is old times.
ME: So apparently this one hunter doesn’t believe in the disastrous prophecy and he’s taking off from his tribe to find a better life for all concerned.
FLAPJACKS: I wonder if that will be a plot point.

(A young girl is brought to the village elder, and a young boy stares at her intensely.)

FLAPJACKS: See? Timeless story of true love.
ME: …it’s kind of creepy seeing prepubescent kids acting like they’re in love.
FLAPJACKS: Well, Roland Emmerich is European. They have different morals than us. That’s why Roman Polanski lives there.
ME: Ew.
FLAPJACKS: I’m not wrong about that.
ME: What type of European is Roland Emmerich anyways? German?
FLAPJACKS: Whatever type is averse to spending money on good special effects.

(The young kids practice hunting.)

ME: Wow. That is one fake looking matte painting.
FLAPJACKS: Be fair – they obviously blew most of their budget on teaching everybody to talk like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
ME: …oh god you’re right. I was going to call you out, but you’re right. They do talk like Zsa Zsa Gabor.
FLAPJACKS: All they need to do is call each other “dahling” and maybe throw in a “mahvelous” or two, and this could be “Hollywood Squares” circa 1983.

(Now everybody is grown up, and the menfolk go hunting after mammoths.)

FLAPJACKS: These are some weak CGI mammoths.
ME: They’re not that bad. I mean, they’re as good as what was in Jurassic Park.
FLAPJACKS: Jurassic Park is fifteen years old. Granted, if I was a teenager again, I’d be stoned, so this would be awesome. But I’m not, and so I recognize these crap special effects for the crap that they are.

(BAD PEOPLE come and take away most of the villagers, except for D’leh (the hero), Tiktik (the tough old guy), Ka’Ren (the sidekick) and Baku (the annoying kid). And a bunch of other villagers, including the wise-woman of the tribe. Really, they didn’t get a whole lot of people, really, but they get Evolet (D’leh’s squeeze), so that is what is important.)

FLAPJACKS: Wow, that one bad guy with the one eye stabbed first before entering. That is planning.
ME: And he killed Baku’s mom! And then took off his evil mask. Why would he take off his evil mask?
FLAPJACKS: After you’ve accidentally stabbed somebody, sometimes you just need to take a moment and breathe it all in.

(The four aforementioned people with names chase after the bad people, with Moka tagging along after the three older men surreptitiously.)

D’LEH:Baku! Why are you here?
ME: “I have a convenient revenge subplot!”
FLAPJACKS: “I provide eye candy for the crucial tween-girl demographic!”
ME: “If I don’t come along, who will make the lame poop jokes and destroy suspension of disbelief? You need me, D’leh!”

(Lengthy travel montage.)

VOICE OF OMAR SHARIF: …and they journeyed for many days, and many nights…
FLAPJACKS: “…for what appears to be thousands and thousands of miles…”
ME: “…down, out of the snowy mountain areas, which are apparently right next door to a tropical rainforest…”
FLAPJACKS: “…because nobody could be bothered to disguise the fact that this is New Zealand, practically the only place on earth where you go from “tundra” to “jungle” in twenty feet…”
ME: While we’re dissing this movie, how come the lead bad guy speaks with an obvious vocal distortion? No way his voice is naturally that deep. It’s making the bass generators in the speakers go staticky.
FLAPJACKS: He’s Darth Vader, Mark One.

(Something attacks the slavers in the bushes.)

FLAPJACKS: What are those, I wonder? Sabretooth tigers? I heard there were sabretooth tigers in this movie.
ME: Maybe it’s velociraptors.
FLAPJACKS: Shame on you for suggesting that Roland Emmerich would lazily recycle from other, better movies, the way he’s cribbing this entire scene from The Lost World.
ME: Wait, are you saying The Lost World was good? The movie where the little black girl beats raptors with gymnastics, remember.
FLAPJACKS: It’s better than this. Why does everybody in this goddamned movie have dreadlocks? I mean, I get it, they don’t have scissors or the concept of cutting hair, but how did they figure out dreadlocks?
ME: Dreadlocks are cave-man-y.
FLAPJACKS: Are their fairly obvious body waxings and manicures also cave-man-y?
ME: They’re metrosexual cavemen.
FLAPJACKS: And how do they manage to shave their facial hear so neatly if they can’t cut their dreadlocks?
ME: They’re Rastafarian metrosexual cavemen.
FLAPJACKS: What’s College Road Trip about again?
ME: Well, Raven-Symone wants to go to college…
FLAPJACKS: That is definitely so Raven.

(D’Leh idiotically tries to free Evolet when the slavers are all intently on guard and a chase scene erupts. It turns out the velociraptors are, in fact, actually giant rocs.)

FLAPJACKS: Wow, these giant rocs are very much acting like velociraptors.
ME: Indeed.
FLAPJACKS: Roland Emmerich believes in evolution.
ME: If “evolution” is “stealing outright from Steven Spielberg,” then yes.

(Tiktik gets hurt by the rocs, and everybody but him and D’leh get captured/recaptured by the slavers, who herd their captives into a desert.)

FLAPJACKS: So let’s recap. They’ve gone from what’s pretty obviously supposed to be at least either Central Europe around Romania or possibly the interior of Russia, through a tropical jungle, and now they’re in a desert, presumably in northern Africa. This is a walk you can measure in the thousands of miles. You’d think they’d at least show some stubble.
ME: I wasn’t aware that there was a tropical jungle anywhere between Europe and northern Africa.
FLAPJACKS: Well, this is ten thousand years ago. Maybe it got cut down by the ancient Romans when they conquered everything.
ME: “But, Heroclitus, what about global warming?”
FLAPJACKS: “Look, these prisoners aren’t going to crucify themselves!”

(D’leh falls into a deep pit trap and falls unconscious. It begins raining thunderously, and he wakes up to see a sabretooth tiger trapped underneath some logs. He decides not to kill it.)

D’LEH: You’d better not eat me!
FLAPJACKS: It’s a giant cat, D’leh. You banking on it having gratitude is not exactly the smart play.
ME: “No, of course I won’t eat you. Not all of you, anyway. Well, not today, I might save some for later. What? I’m a fucking giant cat. At least I won’t play around with your remains too much, okay?”

(Amazingly, the cat does not eat D’leh, and he and Tiktik make their way to an African tribal village, where the cat shows up to protect them from villagers who think they’re enemies, then leaves.)

FLAPJACKS: “I was never here, okay? God, I’d never live this shit down if people found out.”
ME: I assume by “people” you mean “other giant cats.”
FLAPJACKS: Yes.

(After the giant cat leaves, the villagers are impressed.)

NAKUDU THE VILLAGE HEADMAN: You come with us, and eat.
TIKTIK: How do you speak our tongue?
ME: “Writer fiat. Why?”
FLAPJACKS: I wonder what the over/under is on the number of times Nakudu here will be asked to translate for Mr. White Guy Who Never Learned A Second Language.
ME: I know I enjoy nothing so much as watching people translate. Especially in an action movie. I like waiting that extra few seconds for crackling dialogue such as can be found in this movie.
D’LEH: Together, we can defeat these demons.
ME: Yeah, suck on that, Diablo Cody! You show D’Leh a hamburger phone and he’d try to eat it!
FLAPJACKS: After a five-minute scene where he would try to learn what a hamburger is, of course.

(The slavers make their getaway on boats. D’leh and Tiktik and Nakudu and the warriors of half a dozen tribes all head into the desert trying to find the city they’re headed for.)

ME: …why don’t they just follow the river? The river has water. Fresh water. The desert does not have fresh water. This really feels like a pretty simple concept here.
FLAPJACKS: Now, now – if they didn’t go into the desert, then D’leh wouldn’t have to invent star navigation to get them out of it.

(Finally, D’leh and company arrive at the slaver city – where the slaves are building pyramids.)

ME: Wait, they took them to Egypt?
FLAPJACKS: I think it’s not actually supposed to be Egypt, per se. I mean, from the steppes of Eurasia to Egypt would be a trek of, like, a year and a half? And note how everything only looks, like, pseudo-Egyptian.
ME: Didn’t Egypt only really get started around 4,000 BC anyway?
FLAPJACKS: You and your “historical accuracy.” Next up, you’ll be complaining about the fact that the reason the mammoths – excuse me, “manniks” – were disappearing from D’leh’s tribe’s homeland is because the fake Egyptians were stealing them to haul giant stone blocks.
ME: I don’t have a problem with the fake Egyptians stealing mammoths to haul giant stone blocks. But this is a desert. Anywhere there’s a desert means you’re probably a lot closer to actual plain old elephants, which are both more suited for the climate and not way the hell off in the middle of nowhere.
FLAPJACKS: “Manniks.”
ME: Also, if I were D’leh, I’d be all intimidated, because these guys are already up to Masonry and Bronze Working, and my tribe is still stuck at Hunting.
FLAPJACKS: That’s their secret plan – to build the Pyramids so they can discover Universal Suffrage a thousand turns ahead of schedule!
ME: “Shit, they probably have Axemen!”
FLAPJACKS: We are such nerds.

(D’leh sneaks into the city to try and convince the slaves to rise up against their masters, but they don’t want to because they think the slavers are gods.)

ME: Apparently “ancient” is synonymous with “retarded.”
FLAPJACKS: Come now. These are simple folk of their times, who do not understand the concept of “boats,” because nothing floated back then.

(D’leh and his allies sneak into the city again and pretend to be slaves, then stampede the mammoths over the slavers. The freed slaves start destroying all the monuments.)

FLAPJACKS: “…and that, children, is why there aren’t any pyramids in Egypt.”
ME: Can this movie get any worse?

(Evolet gets stabbed by the bad guy slaver, who incidentally is romantically obsessed with her by now. D’leh stabs him to death, then holds Evolet as she dies, but then the wise woman back at the tribe does magic and passes her life-force onto Evolet, who recovers from being shot with an arrow in the back.)

FLAPJACKS: Yes. Yes it can.

(Happy reunions all around as the remnants of D’leh’s tribe head back home, with seeds given to them by Naduku so they can become farmers, what with the mammoths not coming around any more.)

FLAPJACKS: Nothing quite like farming on frozen tundra. Why didn’t we go see the Raven-Symone movie with Martin Lawrence in it?
ME: I think technically Martin Lawrence gets top billing.
FLAPJACKS: Nobody puts Raven in a corner!

The DC: The New Frontier movie is honestly pretty bad. Weak voice acting (Neil Patrick Harris is good; everyone else is mostly not), generic-looking animation that looks more like warmed-over third degree Dini/Timm models than the gorgeous Darwyn Cooke pencils from the comic, and a superhero-heavy storyline (which removes a lot of the charm of the book) all contribute to make what is easily one of the best comics of the last decade into Just Another Crappy Superhero Cartoon.

Bleh.

EDIT TO ADD: I remembered that a few days ago one of the comic news stories making the rounds was that DC was considering scrapping their animated DVD movie of the famous Teen Titans story, “The Judas Contract.” And how Teen Titans fans were trying to mobilize to get it made, and…

…why?

Seriously. If you’ve already read “The Judas Contract,” it’s not going to get any better as a cartoon; comics stories in particular are noteworthy for losing a lot of their storytelling power in cartoon form. Think for a second about how many episodes of the various DC cartoons are explicitly based on existing comic book stories. (For BTAS, as an example, I can think of one or two Joker episodes, and that’s about it.) Using themes and broad story arcs from the comics (“the Legion and the Fatal Five team up to destroy the Sun-Eater” or “Terra joins up with, then betrays the Teen Titans”) is fine, but pure adaptation?

It’s impossible to duplicate the effect “The Judas Contract” had on its readers at the time, because the cartoon can’t duplicate the months of reading New Teen Titans, watching Terra work within the team, and then one month when you weren’t even slightly expecting it OH SNAP SHE IS FUCKING DEATHSTROKE THE TERMINATOR, Y’ALL. The box copy on the back of the DVD will say something like “can the Teen Titans ever be prepared for betrayal… from within?” and the shock value of the story – which is in large part the reason it worked so well – just won’t exist, unless you seriously think new viewers are going to think “hey, maybe Robin or Kid Flash is the traitor.” (Hint: they will not.)

Here’s an idea: make direct-to-DVD movies with actual new stories. Wacky, I know, but I’ve watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm multiple times, because it is actually a good movie, rather than cheap regurgitation of existing product transformed into fanboy porn designed to milk ever yet more money out of an existing fanbase.

FIVE KEANU REEVES PERFORMANCES WHICH ARE GENUINELY GOOD

Keanu Reeves gets way more shit than he deserves, mostly because his acting talents tend to fall within a very specific subset, which he is called upon to exceed with depressing regularity. An early turn in Desperate Liaisons convinced a lot of producers that he was fodder for costume drama – which led to terrible appearances in Much Ado About Nothing and A Walk In The Clouds and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Perfectly serviceable action roles in Speed and Point Break convinced Hollywood he was the next big action star, which led to Chain Reaction, the less said about which the better. And The Matrix convinced everybody that he was a genre actor, which led to The Gift and Constantine.

But here’s the thing: Keanu Reeves is honestly not that bad an actor. People use him as a punchline but ignore the fact that when he gets to use his particular mannerisms to his advantage, he’s excellent at fitting himself within a movie. So what if it’s not the method – he’s good at what he does, and he just gets misused a hell of a lot. In short, he’s your classic character actor, except everybody thinks he’s a leading man.

(Plus, as a sidenote: I know from people who would know that Reeves is that rarest of creatures – the Hollywood actor who genuinely doesn’t have an egotistical swelling about his job. Unlike a lot of actors, who claim humility from the driver’s seat of their Porsches, Reeves lives a fairly nomadic, non-materialistic lifestyle, is well-known for being extremely generous to the crew members he works with, and the general belief from everybody who has worked with him is that if tomorrow, you told him he could no longer be an actor, he would shrug, go open up a surf shop somewhere, and be entirely content. And that, let us be honest, is awesome.)

So here are five Reeves roles, all of them good and enhancing the quality of the movies he’s in, all of them well-done, in no particular order.

1.) and 2.) Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey

Maybe these are gimmes, but the two Bill and Ted flicks are both simply fantastic fun, with Reeves and Alex Winter driving them with strangely intense idiot slacker energy. They don’t put on airs about the obvious limitations of their characters, and if you think this is easy, consider Jack Black or Will Ferrell or Ben Stiller or Owen Wilson doing the same movie. You wouldn’t be able to pause for breath without having it made perfectly clear to you that Bill and Ted were worthless numbskulls, possibly having it punctuated with a loud shout of “I AM PAINFULLY STUPID!”

But Bill and Ted aren’t stupid per se; they’re naive and ignorant, but goodhearted, innocent, inventive and quick to adapt to their circumstances. (One of the best bits in Bogus Journey is when they have a time-travel battle with the villain without ever lifting a finger, then figure out how to achieve their demanded glorious destiny not five minutes later.) It takes a lot of nuance to convey that, nuance a lot of top-billing comedic actors couldn’t or wouldn’t manage. But Reeves (and Alex Winter, of course) manage it easily.

(And for the record, although everybody loves Excellent Adventure, Bogus Journey is by far the superior of the two films: more ambitious in plot, character growth, scope and existential humour. Come on, they compliment God on the creation of the universe! And they wedgie Death!)

3.) My Own Private Idaho

Sure, it’s River Phoenix’s movie. But My Own Private Idaho can be analogized very accurately to Scent of a Woman, where Al Pacino might be grabbing the screen and demanding your attention, but it takes Chris O’Donnell (in one of the truly under-recognized performances in film history, I might add) to keep up with him, line for line, doing the immensely difficult task of not being thrust into the background by Pacino’s violent mastication of any and all scenery while playing a much less melodramatic character. In Idaho, Reeves has the O’Donnell job; Phoenix gets all the showy lines, but it’s Reeves’ burnout rent boy that brings balance to the picture as the object of Phoenix’s affection, the necessary enigma to Phoenix’s laser-targeted misguided direction.

4.) A Scanner Darkly

Keanu Reeves is at his best when his character doesn’t quite know what’s going on, which is problematic because his leading-man looks directly conflict with that type of role. Here, however, in this very solid Philip K. Dick adaptation, Reeves’ gradual collapse into a permanent, near-totally-brain-damaged state perfectly mirrors his skill set (go ahead, make your own joke here, you’ve been patient); as his confusion and paranoia mounts, Reeves’s portrayal of man simply trying to remember what the right thing is so he can do it gets more poignant with every viewing. So what if it’s rotoscoped? You can still get all the nuances out of the performance.

5.) Parenthood

I know, I know, everybody was expecting me to wind up with The Matrix, and that’s fair because Reeves’ work as Neo is honestly really good, and carries the picture (although not, so much, its sequels). But this old Ron Howard family comedy is another good example of Reeves playing a good-natured confused dude. His Tod (one “d”) explodes into Dianne Wiest’s family against all her furious denial, but ends up being the male role model her son needs and eventually a dependable member of the family. (The scene where Tod explains to the mother how he dealt with her son’s discovery of masturbation is both pricelessly funny and stupidly adorable.)

Holy crap, this got long in a hurry. Behind a cut it goes.

continue reading "MGK Live-Blogs The Oscars"

WHY JUNO WILL WIN BEST PICTURE: Because it’s funny. Because it manages the difficult trick of being funny and serious and heartbreaking all at once, and sometimes simultaneously. Because Diablo Cody is a hot young talent and people want to reward her. Because it’s a comedy and comedies tend to pick up undecided Academy voters late in the game over dramas. Because Jason Reitman did a good job. Because people are really impressed with Ellen Page.

WHY JUNO WILL NOT WIN BEST PICTURE: Because it’s kind of slight. Because Diablo Cody, while talented, is also considered by many – and not unfairly – to be somewhat precious and twee (hamburger phone? Really?). Because anybody who wants to reward Cody or Page or Reitman can vote for them in the appropriate categories. Because Cody and Page and Reitman aren’t even going to win their own categories, let alone contribute to winning the big one. Because nobody really talks that way.

WHY ATONEMENT WILL WILL BEST PICTURE: Because it’s a costume drama, and that’s always a dependable voting bloc in the Academy. Because James Purefoy and Keira Knightley are incandescent on screen. Because it has an excellent literary pedigree. Because it’s about war, kinda, which is always dependable for votes.

WHY ATONEMENT WILL NOT WIN BEST PICTURE: Because costume dramas have as many haters as they do boosters. Because two other movies this year have literary pedigrees, one of which (There Will Be Blood) is arguably more impressive. Because although it’s set in a time of war, there are in fact no battle scenes. Because every year, there’s an “honor just to be nominated” film, and this year, it is Atonement.

WHY MICHAEL CLAYTON WILL WIN BEST PICTURE: Because it’s a sharp, intelligent legal thriller, and far and away the best one in a year of numerous very good sharp intelligent legal thrillers. Because George Clooney gives the best performance of an already storied and brilliant career. Because Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton do even better. Because it trades in suspense for existential sadness and makes you enjoy it. Because it’s just gorgeously shot and paced and wholly professional in every way. Because “I am Shiva, the God of Death!”

WHY MICHAEL CLAYTON WILL NOT WIN BEST PICTURE: Because sharp, intelligent legal thrillers only very rarely do well at the Academy Awards. Because trading in suspense makes the movie perhaps somewhat predictable. Because it’s solid and excellent in an unassuming, unpretentious way, which means it has a harder time getting votes because it’s not big and showy and waving its metaphorical hands around. Because there are acting categories to reward good actors.

WHY NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN WILL WIN BEST PICTURE: Because it’s well past time to reward the Coen Brothers. Because Javier Bardem’s villain is an instant classic, a nightmare piece of cinematic history. Because Josh Brolin had a really, really good year and this was the best part of it. Because it’s languid like a hot Texas day – and just as menacing. Because did we mention the Coen brothers are well past overdue for some little golden statues?

WHY NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN WILL NOT WIN BEST PICTURE: Because people might like There Will Be Blood better. Because the last fifteen minutes of the movie feel, to some, to be kind of aimless and draggy. Because Javier Bardem is going to win Best Supporting Actor in a landslide, so why recognize him here. Because Because the Coens are possibly the new Martin Scorcese.

WHY THERE WILL BE BLOOD WILL WIN BEST PICTURE: Because Daniel Day-Lewis fucking owns the screen for nearly three hours. Because Paul Danno matches up to him. Because the oil-gush is dramatic and intense. Because Paul T. Anderson is likewise overdue for a little golden statue. Because it’s relevant, in a historical sense, to modern energy issues. Because I drink your milkshake.

WHY THERE WILL BE BLOOD WILL NOT WIN BEST PICTURE: Because Daniel Day-Lewis is doing the standard “shout a lot and be showy” method of winning an Academy Award, even if he is doing it well. Because he’s got his own statue to win. Because Anderson doesn’t have as storied a career as the Coens do. Because a lot of people don’t like the score. Because the last twenty minutes really go off the rails in some people’s eyes.

Sherlock Holmes does not get enough movie love, these days.

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point Sherlock Holmes, one of the most fantastically cinematic characters there is, got relegated to television. The lengthy Jeremy Brett series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes likely had something to do with it, simply because it was such a good television show and so perfectly realized that it almost seemed to make further adaptations of the classic Holmes stories pointless. (After all, the series managed to neatly adapt practically all of the original Holmes stories.)

There’s also the continuing fear of making new Holmes stories, not least because the original Sherlock Holmes stories are so elegantly written; the mystery genre is, to this day, largely defined by the rules set out by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even if he never actually intended to create rules for mystery writing in the first place. And if you’re going to write a mystery story, it becomes more intimidating to write one using Sherlock Holmes, because his fanbase, to this day, remains quite enthusiastic – and judgemental.

Even so, that’s no excuse. More Holmes movies are needed. But, in the meantime, there are two excellent and largely underrated flicks for Holmes fans to enjoy, both evading the “but I can’t imitate Conan Doyle” trap by twisting the concept as they saw fit to create a new type of story.

Without A Clue goes for a comedic take on the Holmes saga, with a very simple premise: Watson is the actual genius. The film actually mirrors a lot of real-life publisher’s intrigue surrounding Holmes: Conan Doyle based the Sherlock Holmes character on a police physician (Dr. Joseph Bell – there’s actually a very good BBC mystery series called Murder Rooms about Bell solving mysteries, with Conan Doyle in the Watson role). Further, Conan Doyle, like Watson in this movie, grew heartily sick of Sherlock Holmes and tried to get rid of him.Of course, Conan Doyle just tried to kill him off in a story. Watson (played by Ben Kingsley, who is awesome in just about everything he has ever been in) has a more difficult trick: due to originally wanting to solve the mysteries incognito (which he’s gotten past, not least because he’s realized how lucrative the private detecting business can be), he hired a drunken stage actor named Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine, who is, as always, Michael fucking Caine) to play the Holmes role. Finally, Watson loses his temper and fires Kincaid, but – whoops – nobody wants to read about “John Watson – the Crime Doctor!” So he reluctantly rehires Kincaid for one last go-around, and of course this turns into a fantastic adventure.

It’s hilarious and exciting both, in equal measures (the final action sequence, in a burning theatre, is really fantastic considering it’s a couple of British guys in their 50s doing all the stunt work), and although the film suffers part way through for having Kingsley offscreen for an extended period (and it’s a shame, because when Caine and Kingsley are tossing lines at one another like exploding popcorn, it’s almost unparalleled great fun), when he storms back triumphantly it’s just all the better. And Caine is of course himself in full fetter, playing the type of role he plays best – a working-class lad trying to pretend he’s classier than he is. As a bonus, Jeffrey Jones plays Lestrade, and Jeffrey Jones is hilarious in everything.

Young Sherlock Holmes goes a wholly different way, one that was somewhat controversial among Holmes fans – it’s a swashbuckling adventure flick rather than a pure mystery, and Holmes’ detective skills, while evident, aren’t nearly so important to the story as his ability with a rapier. Answering the never-asked-but-why-not question of “what if Holmes and Watson met when they were in school” with “well, clearly they would investigate a murderous cult,” the film is nowadays frequently reduced to being the answer to a trivia question. (“What film had the first totally computer-generated character?”)

It deserves better. Young Sherlock Holmes is burdened unfairly in a number of ways, not least being the fact that the bad guys are a cult (one of those things that never really seems to click with audiences in movies). Alan Cox as Young Watson is, perhaps, somewhat overwhelmed by the role. And maybe a little more detectoring would have been in order, considering it’s a Sherlock Holmes movie in title if nothing else. (Admittedly, the film’s ending makes it clear that Holmes’ experiences over the course of the story teach him to value deductive logic and discipline above all else, so it’s not incorrectly used – but it still feels a bit incongruous.)

But its strengths greatly outweigh the minuses. The action sequences are excellent, the plot well-thought-out (it was written by Chris Columbus, of all people). The villains are excellent and genuinely freakish when they need to be, and the hallucinogenic sequences are scary in all the right ways. The comedic bits don’t detract from the story in the slightest (and in a movie like this one, where the desire to break the fourth wall is almost palpable, that’s a great thing). Best of all, the central romantic relationship between Nicholas Rowe’s Holmes and Sophie Ward as Elizabeth is excellent; both young actors are very talented and play their roles near-perfectly.

Both films are great, but they can’t give us what we truly crave, which is more original Holmes flicks in the classic mold. But, until such time as somebody makes a new one, they do quite nicely.

Good romantic comedies are genuinely rare. (This comes from someone who has tried to write a couple, and they both flat-out sucked.)

The reason good romantic comedies are rare is because they’re modern-day fairytales, with all that the metaphor implies. Think for a second on the number of terrible revisionist/”original” fairytales you’ve read. (There are a lot.) A great romcom has to have a lot of things: romantic leads you actively want to see together, crackling wit (if it isn’t really funny, you just have a slightly boring romance), and a satisfying ending that avoids being predictable.

This last one is the hardest, because the end goal of most romcoms is to get the boy and the girl together, so either the writer has to avoid that ending altogether (Waitress, Annie Hall), or fake out the audience by suggesting that instead of being a fairytale, this is a “well maybe true love doesn’t always win out, but there are other good things in life so that’s okay” movie and then managing to deliver the happy ending without it being a copout (When Harry Met Sally).

Sometimes a romcom can go a slightly different route and make the relationship secondary to another event. Knocked Up and Juno are both good examples of how to do this, using pregnancy as the arc instead of the romance, which becomes inexorably tied with the pregnancy. For an example of a film that doesn’t do it quite as well: Nine Months. Of course, if you go this route, you don’t really have a pure romcom any more; you’ve got a sort of hybrid. Enjoyable, but not really exemplary of the genre.

(A fourth, rarely used option is to explicitly go with the fairytale aspect of romcoms and deliver the happy ending with a complete lack of irony; this is actually probably the hardest of the four to manage, partly because it’s almost a meta-answer that plays on audience expectations, and partly because you need total audience acceptance of your narrative, which means only a really strong screenplay can dare to pull it off. Think The Princess Bride or Enchanted or Love, Actually.)

The problem is that because of the necessity of a satisfying ending, romantic comedy is a genre with a few dazzling peaks surrounded by mediocrity and outright crap; there really aren’t many B+ level romcoms, I think. You have a few wonderful A+ and As, and then you drop straight to the C+ level (Matthew McConaughey shows up a lot in these sorts of movies), and then it just gets very bad very quickly (Good Luck Chuck, anything by Tyler Perry, et cetera). Which is also the reason guys dismiss a lot of romcoms as chick flicks; way too many romcoms simply pander to basic expectations of the genre, with subpar performances, formulaic plots, and relatively boring comedy. And this isn’t anything new, I might add: there have been shitty romcoms for as long as there have been movies. They weren’t all The Apartment back in the day, you know.

This is a pity, because a really cracking romcom is just about the most satisfying thing going. And Definitely, Maybe, which I have just seen recently, is a really cracking romcom. (See, there was a point to all that meandering introductory crap after all!)

I mention this because I just saw Definitely, Maybe, which instantly makes it into my A+ list. It has the crackling wit (it’s really very funny, with a hilarious supporting appearance by Kevin Kline well worthy of mention) and deftly manages to avoid being predictability by giving the male romantic lead (Ryan Reynolds, who I have always kind of liked anyway, here lowering his natural tendency to overplay lines to a new, appreciated minimum) not one but three potential romantic pairings (Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz and Isla Fisher, all excellent – and, in a medium where there is a pronounced tendency for younger and younger actresses, all stunningly age-appropriate for their roles), in addition to flirting with the possibility that maybe Reynolds doesn’t end up with any of them but instead someone else entirely, and using a terribly clever narrative device to tell the story.

The device is thus: Reynolds is telling his daughter (Abigail Breslin, absolutely goddamned adorable) how he eventually met her mother, whom he is now in the process of divorcing amicably. Over the course of the story, his relationships with each of the women change and vary, making each of them a suitable answer for who he eventually ended up marrying, thus keeping the ending unpredictable (and keeping the chance that this is a “well, at least he has his daughter, whom he clearly adores, and that’s not half bad” ending a fresh possibility throughout). More importantly, it grounds the narrative in sad realism: sometimes things don’t always work out the way you intend, and more often than not relationships don’t arrive fresh out of vacuum-packed storage, but instead are the sum of everything you said and did that came before; a boy does not simply meet, lose, and rewin a girl without (usually) meeting and losing several other girls enroute.

It’s a level of maturity that most romcoms simply don’t possess, and it gives the story a surprising amount of heft for what, in the end, is a fairytale, albeit a dinged and bruised scrappy survivor sort of fairytale. Highly recommended.