Well, I'm back from a three-day weekend with a lot to talk about. It's funny, apparently NBCU was the only company on the planet to actually have Monday off. Not that I'm complaining, mind you ... it just made me feel slightly awkward to have no work when everyone else seemed to. The upside of that was that I was able to do a bunch of errands in the afternoon without the hassle of big crowds. I even went to the Glendale Galleria and found a parking space within like 5 seconds of arrival -- amazing.
Now, there's something about a three-day weekend - the lack of time pressure, the feeling of it being a special occasion, whatever - that makes it perfect for a double feature at the movies. I already wrote of said double feature over the weekend, so check out my review of THE BOX if you haven't already. But stay tuned in this very column for a review of another interesting weekend movie - THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.
First though, some TV STUFF:
- I've been excited to talk about Friday's episode of SMALLVILLE. As I was watching it off the DVR on Saturday, I kept doing double-takes -- was this episode of Smallville actually sort of ... awesome?! The fact is, this was a freaking epic episode of TV. It had almost none of the usual Smallville relationship melodrama, instead focusing on an intense, action-packed storyline involving the younger version of Zod ,who's been lurking in the background throughout the season. For a while now, I've expressed annoyance with this new Zod and how he and his Kryptonian army have just been wandering around with no explanation, seemingly contradicting the character's previous appearances on the show. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that the story of this younger Zod and how he happened to end up on earth was actually very well done. In fact, it was downright kickass in parts. I mean, the episode opened with a scene straight out of a big-budget Superman movie - a bloody battle on Krypton that turned very ugly, prompting friends Zod and Jor-El to work together to create a contingency plan should such wholesale destruction ever happen again. Joe-El creates a sphere containing the DNA of many of Krypton's elite soldiers as well as his own, and sends it to earth as a sort of worst-case-scenario contingency plan. Years later, the sphere is triggered on earth (where Clark Kent is already a twenty-something), and Zod and Jor-El, once friends, are now at odds, as Zod looks to assemble a superpowered, conquering army. Pretty cool stuff - it felt a lot like some of the themes currently being explored in the Superman comics' "New Krypton" storyline, and it was way more serious and intense than your average ep of Smallville. A lot of the credit has to go to the top-notch actors who brought Zod and Jor-El to life. Not since John Glover was a regular as Lionel Luthor has the show seen such dramatic heavywights - Callium Blue as Zod finally got a meaty script to chew on in this ep, and Julian Sands, as Jor-El, brought a badass Bri'ish accent and some real *gravitas* to the episode. And it was nice to see an episode where Tom Welling got to do more than brood or pine for Lois. This one had real stakes, real emotion. And there were a lot of cool little touches to boot, that really helped to give the episode a "big" feel. I loved, for example, a scene where Jor-El is brought before the Kryptonian high council, in a scene that looked straight out of the old-school Superman movies, complete with floating disembodied heads ominously giving Jor-El their orders. Meanwhile, the ending of the episode actually packed a punch - rare for Smallville. The episode still suffered from some of the same clunkiness of other recent eps, and there also still seemed to be some sizable holes in the whole Zod storyline. But man, this was, at the end of the day, a pretty damn good episode of Smallville.
My Grade: A-
- Sunday saw not one but two episode of FAMILY GUY, in what FOX was marketing as basically an all Seth McFarlane, all-the-time night of television. I didn't even bother to watch the Seth McFarlane-hosted variety special thing, but I heard it was pretty awful so, no, I don't feel too bad about missing it. As for the Family Guy, well, it was definitely the tale of two episodes. The first was actually pretty decent - it involved Brian the dog striking up a relationship with an older (human) woman. At first, he defends the relationship even as the rest of the family makes fun of him, but ultimately, he realizes that it wasn't meant to be. It reminded me a bit of the recent Michael Scott-dates-Pam's mom plotline on The Office, and the episode had a bit more of a sustained story than most FG eps of late. There were a couple of pretty funny old-people-are-weird jokes, and overall, it was an alright ep of FG. The second episode though, featuring an android Miley Cyrus and a spotlight on the evil monkey that haunts Chris' bedroom, was pretty awful. The humor fell flat, and the whole ep just felt like it was really reaching for material. I mean, did we really need an episode centered around the long-running Evil Monkey gag? No, we did not.
My Grades:
Ep #1: B
Ep #2: D
- Meanwhile, even if it's not spectacular or anything, I have to say I've been solidly enjoying THE CLEVELAND SHOW. Despite the usual Seth McFarlane touches - talking animals, random cutaways, etc. - the show feels way more grounded than Family Guy, where entire characters have been reduced to one-note jokes (Meg, anyone?). But The Cleveland Show has actually developed some fun characters (I love Cleveland Jr.), and also settled on a nice balance of traditional sitcom storytelling with Family Guy-style craziness. To that end, I got a kick out of Sunday's ep, in which Cleveland Jr. takes a virginity pledge, much to his father's dismay. Like I said, Cleveland Jr. is prob the best character on the show, so I've been enjoying the focus on him in the last couple of episodes. This isn't yet on the level of old-school Family Guy, but it's becoming a solid Sunday night performer.
My Grade: B+
- So last night was GOSSIP GIRL's big "three-way" episode, as has been hyped by the CW for weeks. It's funny, because the three-way-dance (if you weeel), was far and away the most interesting part of the episode, particularly in terms of how it will affect future storylines. Vanessa has always been a character who is supposed to be "good", at least in the morally relativistic world of Gossip Girl, and yet, she's done a lot of pretty semi-evil crap over the years. That has ultimately made her one of the most annoying characters on the show, because she seems to always get a pass - and still acts the show's voice of concious - no matter how low she sinks. So I guess it's kind of intriguing that Vanessa's participation in the "Dan Humphrey Dream Scenario" might have some serious fallout in the episodes to come. A war between Vanessa and Hillary Duff could be pretty juicy stuff. But otherwise, this episode was sort of bland. They need storylines for Blair and Nate that don't involve high school (seeing as how they're in college). And the larger problem is that Blair and Chuck are becoming too quasi-sympathetic and rational. Please make them *evil* again. And the Jenny vs. Eric drama seems pretty contrived - I mean, what does he really have to gain by "taking her down for good"? But yeah, the Dan-centric love triangle stuff could get interesting. Jeez, how did that guy go from underdog loser to movie-star-dating, grade-A college pimp?
My Grade: B
And now, the aforementioned movie review ...
THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS Review:
- The Men Who Stare at Goats is a pretty good movie, but it feels like a movie that could and probably should have been great. All of the ingredients are there - an all-star cast, and a fascinating, true-life premise. But some fundamental problems keep this from being all that it could be, so to speak. The structure of the movie is odd, the humor is hit-or-miss, and the narrative, rather than providing real insight into the characters or plot, is ultimately just kind of there. Still, this is a fun and entertaining movie, and the cast is so talented that they can basically carry the movie on charisma alone. It's worth checking out, but it's definitely not in the Coen Bros. class of seriously funny screwball satire which it clearly aspires to be in.
The movie tells the somewhat-true story of a fringe division of the US military that was active in the late stages of the Cold War, circa the early 80's. This group of hippies, new-agers, and peaceniks seemed like an odd fit for the armed forces, but at the time, the government was looking for new-wave alternatives to traditional combat, given the non-traditional nature of the Cold War. When word gets out that the Russians were experimenting with psychic soldiers and other such out-there craziness, the US wanted to stay competitive. And that's where The Men Who Stare At Goats come in. The movie checks in with these former psychic warriors during the early days of the Iraq War - during which a frustrated reporter, Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) stumbles into one of them, and smells the story of a lifetime. Wilton meets Lynn Cassady (a 'stache-sporting George Clooney, in his default "cocky goofball" mode), and tags along with him as the former psychic agent sets out on a secret mission to reunite with his former brothers-in-arms. The movie then alternates between the 00's, with McGregor and Clooney getting into trouble in Iraq, and the 80's, where we see, in flashback, the early days of Clooney and co.'s new-age army corps.
Personally, I wasn't crazy about the constant flashes back and forth. It seemed that all the best material was in the flashbacks, and I didn't really get why the movie wasn't just a straight narrative that took us from the group's post-Vietnam beginnings to the present day. Part of the problem is that McGregor's character is basically a black hole of personality. I don't think this is Ewan's fault, per se, but the fact is that Bob Wilton is a pretty poorly-drawn character who you never really get behind. There are also a lot of references made by McGregor to the Jedi and using the power of the Jedi, etc. - I'm not sure if this is meant to be an ironic joke or not, but it just comes off as kind of awkward watching Obi-Wan sound all gee-whiz about Jedi stuff. Meanwhile, the best character in the movie might just be Jeff Bridges as Bill Django, the pony-tailed hippie who was the main man behind the whole psychic soldier initiative. Jeff Bridges just rocks, plain and simple. And the fact is, in a movie full of big-name actors sort of reprising the past roles that made them famous, none is as iconic or just plain awesome as seeing Bridges in full-on Lebowski mode. The initial coolness of seeing Bridges looking like The Dude is one thing, but the fact is that while some of the other guys seem to be phoning it in, Bridges is, as usual, on top of his game, giving Django a real iconic, larger-than-life feel. Basically, nearly every scene in the movie with Bridges is a winner.
Like I said, this movie does play like a greatest-hits record of sort, as far as the actors go. There's Clooney doing a riff on the same kind of character we've seen from him in movies like "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" and "Leatherheads." There's Ewan McGregor once again playing the affable everyman. There's Bridges doing a version of Lebowski, and Kevin Spacey playing the smarmy asshole ("Glengary Glenross," "LA Confidential."). Bridges makes it work, and the others are fine, but there's still that weird feeling that, rather than seeing these great actors really work, you're just seeing them reprise old favorites.
Even so, the sheer number of great actors in the movie is staggering. McGregor. Clooney. Bridges. Spacey. In addition, there's Stephen Lang as a gruff general, ROBERT PATRICK and the guy who plays AARON PIERCE on 24 as other army officials, and even the great Stephen Root as another former colleague of Clooney's. These are really solid guys. I mean, if you need some badass guys to play army officials, you don't get much better than John Doggett and Aarron freakin' Pierce, you know?
And the movie does have very funny moments. Clooney and Bridges do a nice job of selling a lot of the humor, and there is a nice, bouncy feel to the movie.
But the move reminds me a bit of something like Leatherheads - in that there is that inevitable feeling that you're watching Coen Bros.-lite. Not only are the Coens' comedies always hilarious, but they have a knack for giving even their goofiest comedies a sense of importance and profundity. The Men Who Stares at Goats is a movie that seems to want to be a political satire of sorts, and I watched the movie trying to figure out what the ultimate takeaway was about this clearly absurd bit of American military history. But the movie is almost too light and fluffy for it's own good. Few things in the movie really stick, and it never really succeeds at Dr. Strangelove-esque satire. Considering the talent involved, that is something of a disappointment. Basically, the movie as it stands is an interesting collection of scenes, but it never really comes together to make a lasting impact, never really gives you insight into its characters or the strange circustances they find themselves in. It's a fun movie - again, I'd say it's worth seeing - but not the must-see it could have been.
My Grade: B
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