movie review: 'dunkirk' (VIDEO)

Yeah, I know, I got to this one late, but it was definitely worth the discussion, at least in my view. Enjoy!

movie review: 'war for the planet of the apes' (VIDEO)

Well, this happened... honestly, I wish I liked this movie a lot more, but again, it just wasn't clicking with me (and yes, I saw all the comments saying the references were an 'homage' and not a direct prequel... slightly less credible the more I think about it, really, I'm not sure I buy that one, it feels like the Star Trek: Into Darkness excuse to avoid comparisons to a superior, more thematically resonant film).

Eh, whatever. Tyler, The Creator is next, so stay tuned!

movie review: 'spider-man: homecoming' (VIDEO)

Well, about damn time I got to this - and it was pretty damn good. Not really great - and I'm still working on trying to get the vlog microphone tuned, it's going to be a work in progress, folks - but it was a cute little gimmick to start things off.

But that's not all you're getting tonight... stay tuned!

movie review: 'baby driver' (VIDEO)

Shit, nearly forgot to post this. Oh, well, it's an amazing movie, SEE IT already!

video review: 'wonder woman'

Well, this was interesting... again, I think this'll ultimately tilt into greatness for me overall thanks to a tremendous lead and some great chemistry, even if the third act does frustrate me. But still, for so many audiences, this is a film they've waited their whole lives to see, and the fact they stuck the landing this well is worth noting. 

Next up, Bleachers, and (sigh) probably alt-j, so stay tuned!

movie review: 'beauty and the beast' (2017) (VIDEO)

I'm not sure how many people this review pleased, but I'm happy I finally got a chance to dig in deep here... and considering how badly I wanted this to work, it's a little heartbreaking. Anyway, Vagabon is next, stay tuned!

movie review: 'logan' (VIDEO)

As I mentioned, I'm not sure this is my best review, but it is one that kind of fascinates me, I think I got close to what I was looking to explore, and that's something.

Next up, Sun Kil Moon, but first we have Billboard BREAKDOWN, so stay tuned!

movie review: 'get out' (VIDEO)

Man, I'm thrilled there was so much interest in this so I could cover it, because it was a fantastic movie and worthy of so much praise. AMAZING flick.

But back to music reviews, I've got Xandria and KNIVES and man, my schedule somehow got insane again. Stay tuned!

movie review: 'the LEGO batman movie' (VIDEO)

Man, it's been nice to talk about a movie again. Glad I'm going to be doing more of that this year thanks to Patreon, it's been quite a trip.

But not a lot of time to say more, next up is Elbow, so stay tuned!

patreon announcement - it starts with you...

Hi folks, welcome to Spectrum Pulse, where we talk about music, movies, art and culture - and this time, the conversation is about you.

No, not like that, or like that either. For those of you who are not aware, my name is Mark Grondin, I'm the host of this series, which includes critical reviews, year-end rankings of songs and records, Special Comments, and of course my weekly series Billboard BREAKDOWN, where I dig into the twisted and often chaotic mess of the Billboard Hot 100. And over the past three to four years, it's been astounding to watch this community of over twenty-three thousand people grow, developing friendships, collaborations, and even memes - and while there have been some contentious moments, I'd like to think that we as a community have helped forge something special. And this... now it's time to take a step I've been considering for nearly two years, a chance to open up the floodgates to you, an experiment I've seen refined and tested in so many quarters.

I speak, of course, of Patreon. Founded in 2013, this was a service designed at its core to better connect artists with their fans and audiences, cut out the middlemen to build the symbiotic relationship, inspired by the old concept of 'patron of the arts'. At a deepeIt r level this was forging a connection, allowing the audience insight into the process or even direction of the art created. It's enabling talent, allowing great things to grow...

And yet, I don't really fit into the traditional definition of 'artist'. Yes, I'm a published author, but I fall more in line as a critic leaning even towards journalism, and while there is indeed value in sparking that conversation, I'm convinced it needs to be treated in a different way. YouTube, in a way, has already started to change this critical dichotomy, harkening back to an older tradition of individual men and women describing, analyzing, and critiquing art, not corporate entities with a brand delivered from on high. For the most part, over six hundred reviews have given you evidence, you know where I stand - and this means the next step is bringing the conversation to you. 

As such, the principle of this Patreon experiment is going to be different than most - smaller, more flexible, more ready and able to connect at the base level so that your voices can be heard, and you can have real insight into my process. As such, the three tiers of involvement are intended to be accessible while still maintaining a clear understanding and control of things, so I don't totally lose my mind in this experience. Probably will anyway, but hey, you never know. And, like any journalist, I need to be accountable to my audience, which is why any Patreon contribution is set per video that I produce - you know where I stand, you get what you pay for, and if the content isn't there, you don't get charged. 

And that's why, in this spirit of this accountability, the first level, at one dollar, is visibility: you get to see my schedule, my upcoming plans, and maybe even a rough timeline of when future projects are to be reviewed in detail, all on a handy Google doc. Now certain things are inevitable: Billboard BREAKDOWN is a weekly series and is not going anywhere, subscriber and channel anniversaries pretty much supersede everything, and year-end lists will of course stick around, but between those, the remaining 75% of my content, this will give you a chance to see where I'm planning on taking my show next.

Now many of you are probably thinking that's pretty innocuous, nothing all that revolutionary, it's just a schedule, it probably doesn't change that much... and yet at that same level, three times a week - Tuesday and Thursday evening around 7-9 pm EST and Saturday afternoon 1-3 pm EST - you will have access to that schedule and an opportunity to vote on entries. Each contributor gets one vote, and depending on the vote tallies, I will move entries up and down my schedule to meet your popular demand. And while there are times of year where one record will supersede everything else in the conversation, I know for a fact you guys and girls are a diverse group who watch for many different things and genres, from pop fans to metalheads, country fans to hip-hop heads, I can foresee some contentious voting. Now there are rules here - for one, I have a vote as well, and this doesn't stipulate a specific timeline for me to cover the projects, only the order in which I'll cover them - of course, with the added condition that the project needs to be out commercially as well (and not just leaked) - I have no problem if you put upcoming projects on the list, but if it's not out by the time I get to it, I might cover something else on the schedule first. And that also means that if an artist has a massive back catalog to get through ahead of time that I haven't previously examined, I may move some things around this schedule if absolutely necessary. I'm dearly hoping this won't be necessary, but again, it's sanity protection for me, and I will always be very straightforward about it if and when that needs to happen.

But wait, you might ask, what if the album I want you to cover isn't on that schedule? Well, this is where we get the second level, at $2, once a week during the Saturday afternoon voting, you have the option instead of voting to change the schedule order, to add an album to my schedule. Of course, there are rules: the album has to be from the year in which I'm currently - in 2016 I cover 2016 albums - the lyrics must be available online in full, I cover full-length albums not EPs or mixtapes or compilations, and there is zero guarantee that adding the record to the list will get you a positive or negative review. The album will start at the bottom of the schedule, and yes, I do have the final say if I'm going to cover it. Independent artists, this is your chance to get in at the ground floor. 

But isn't there something else in my tagline that doesn't tend to get enough attention? Well, at the highest tier - $5, one a week during the Saturday afternoon voting, you have the option instead of voting on the schedule order to add a movie. Now like with the albums there are some big stipulations here: the film needs to be from the same year and widely distributed - I need to be able to see it either in a theater or on video - I cover studio-backed films, and again, no guarantee of positive or negative review. Again, it starts off at the bottom of the schedule, but can be voted upon by everyone within the general process. After all, I say I cover music, movies, art and culture - this way, the truth in that tagline gets to be emphasized.

And that's pretty much it - again, this is an experiment of interactivity. I want to get you more involved in the process while maintaining my usual standard of quality. I'm not gating off content or releasing things early for patrons - that's not something I believe in on a fundamental level - and if you don't want or can't afford to be part of this, there's no ill will from me. And sure, there's a far off dream of doing this full-time, but even that won't come without you. But until that comes to a reality, I'd be very grateful to welcome you to this team so we can have some fun. Until then, I'm Mark, welcome to Spectrum Pulse, and I'll see you all on Tuesday - voting starts then, the experiment starts now.

movie review: 'deadpool' (VIDEO)

I was really hesitant about releasing this video at all - it's more of a rambling vlog than anything else... but I do think it came out all right, and I'm curious how the response is going to be.

And that all means that yes, the Mute Gods and Kanye reviews are coming soon, so stay tuned!

special comment: 'pain & gain = wolf of wall street = spring breakers' (VIDEO)

My first movie-related video, where I talk about three films I liked, their striking similarities, and why the outrage against them is misplaced.

Next up... well, it's not going to be Asher Roth, because he delayed his album - again. So, I'll probably cover Kid Ink. Stay tuned!

special comment: pain & gain = wolf of wall street = spring breakers

There were three movies released this past year that I liked a great deal. Three 2013 films that came from different directors, had different casts, released at different points this year, and received vastly different critical appraisals. One came from cinematic junk food director Michael Bay, guilty of the Transformers movies and all manner of other garbage cinema. One came from Martin Scorsese, responsible for Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Departed, and one of the men most responsible for transforming Leonardo DiCaprio into a movie star. And one came from Harmony Korine, a film-school dropout whose last film was called Trash Humpers and who can be blamed for writing the script of atrocities like Ken Park.

The movies I'm talking about are Pain & Gain, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Spring Breakers - and they all exist on the exact same spectrum. The movies are mostly trying to do different things, but they exist in the same universe and share a disturbing amount of common elements. And the moral outrage that was - in my opinion, wrongly - hurled at all three films comes from the exact same place - as will the people who love these films for all the wrong reasons

What, don't believe me? Let's start with a basic plot synopsis of all three films.

movie review: 'man of steel'

I like Superman more than Batman.

I'll give you a moment to go find your socks that just blew off, but let me also explain why, because it's key to certain elements of this review and why I don't think the rebooted Superman works all that well (spoilers, I'm not the biggest fan of Man of Steel, if you want the review in a sentence). This mostly has to do with certain misconceptions regarding the character and the mythos surrounding Superman, and I'm going to try and clear some of those up (yes, it's going to be one of those reviews).

To wit, when Siegel and Shuster created Superman, they were very much aware of the mythological parallels to the character such as Hercules and Moses, and they created him as a character who fought for social justice, an immigrant from another planet fighting for our world. It's also been theorized that Superman was considered a surrogate father figure, particularly to many of the young boys who read the comics in the 40s and 50s while their real fathers were engaged in the Second World War and the Korean War, not to mention the loss of Siegel's father in a robbery years earlier. Many, many writers who would follow them would take their own stabs and defining Superman, but in the end, a core distillation of Superman's role and values crystallized, as they did with Wonder Woman and Batman. 

Batman was the spirit of justice, Wonder Woman was the spirit of truth, and Superman was the symbol of hope.

I want you all to consider this for a moment. Superman is the symbol of hope, an alien from another planet, yet raised with our values and having a much stronger connection to Earth than he ever would the destroyed Krypton. He is a man who gains the most power not on his homeworld but on Earth, thanks to the yellow light rays of our sun. And yet he chooses not to represent himself as some ubermensch, some titan of power that rules us, but as a figure to which we all can look up. Many, many authors have played with the Christ symbolism in connection to Superman, and while I will argue there's definitely a grain of salt in that comparison, I don't think it quite encapsulates the other elements of his character - namely, his more human side. There's a degree of humility in Superman's choice of a secret identity - an unassuming reporter working for a newspaper, where he could inform the American public and ensure his travels could get him in places of danger that he could stop in his alter ego. His relationship with Lois Lane plays a big part in this story, both as a 'grounding' facet of his character and as a very real emotional link, showing his connection to us and our world.

Now, maybe it's just me, but that's potent material for writing a powerful story - but yet so many people don't see these elements in the character. Many tend to consider him a 'boring', 'stupid' character, overloaded with powers and strengths that make him invincible, and obviously a character without weakness can't have any notable threats. They don't understand why he doesn't just kill Lex Luthor or General Zod or why he doesn't enact the same brand of justice for which Batman is emblematic. Or, in a complete misunderstanding of the character, they point to things like this:

Yeah, it's a load of shit. As I stressed above, Superman is a person who has a much stronger and much more potent connection to his human roots than his Kryptonian ones. He was raised in Smallville, a little farm town in Kansas to be a good, compassionate, altruistic person (which is often where the 'stupid' adjective gets applied in the false equivalency where 'good'='dumb', which pisses me off to no end), and while he is aware his powers make him different from humanity, he does not think they place him above us. And from that, you can sketch out the best Superman stories, where it doesn't matter if he has incredible powers, but the ultimate futility of his task. He can't save everyone from everything, but he's going to try his damnedest anyway. He knows that people look to him as a symbol of hope, as someone whose values they want to emulate, and thus he must balance his very human desires with his chosen duty. He knows that people will look at him with fear and anger and jealousy and distrust, but he rises above that because he believes we all can be better.

It's no surprise kids fall in love with Superman. He's the adult who can fly and fight bad guys and shoot lasers out of his eyes, and he's going to do it no matter what and with a smile on his face once the bad guys are gone - in short, he's the idealized father figure for many of these kids. And yet the funny thing is that once those kids get past the teenager stage (where they all tend to embrace Batman over Superman because Superman 'isn't cool') and become adults, they tend to like Superman again, but for different reasons. They see him as the character who has to balance his love life and his job, who has to face impossible odds and somehow prevail, and who through all of it remains a good person. They don't care about his power set or his less-than-stellar gallery of villains - most can see past that and see someone deep down they want to emulate, an ideal to aspire towards.

That's potent stuff, there's real dramatic material there that has resonated time and time again, with the same archetypes stretching back through history. There's a reason Superman has persisted in the modern collective unconscious for as long as it has, perhaps putting the lie to Lois' first article in Superman Returns, 'Why The World Doesn't Need Superman'. And thus my interest was definitely piqued when I heard Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan were teaming up with a stellar cast to retell the Superman origin story yet again. And believe it or not, I immediately thought that while the choice of a director was solid (Zack Synder, despite all of the problems with him, has a gift for comic-book-esque shot composition and 'epic' scale if the script can support it), the problems might come from Nolan and his writing team. They understood Batman (mostly), but Superman's a tougher character to nail down and requires a bit more maturity and careful forethought. Could they pull it off?

movie review: 'star trek: into darkness'

"I've never really been a fan of Star Trek.

Granted, I've seen the movies, but I've never watched the TV show, and while I have vague ideas about certain popular elements of the franchise (most drawn from when I had to research elements of the franchise for a high school debate), I've never really cared about it all that much. You could say that it was because I was exposed to Star Wars before Star Trek, but for the most part, I just have never really been interested.

That being said, I respect Star Trek for what it is, and Gene Roddenberry's original vision of the franchise. It was a series filled with great dreams of manifest destiny, of going to places where no human has gone before, exploring that last great frontier. As a guy with more than a passing interest in science, I have huge respect for that drive, and I'm still pissed that the US space program, once one of the frontrunners of science and technology in the world, has been gutted over the past several years.

So with that in mind, it might not come as any surprise to most of you that I never really liked the Star Trek reboot. Oh, don't get me wrong, McCoy and Scotty were great, and Spock was pretty good, but the writing was very subpar (even on the standards of Star Trek) and Chris Pine has the emotional range of a tree stump and is maybe a tenth as likeable. He is a terrible Captain Kirk, and I sincerely hope that they don't continue this franchise - I mean, when your writing sucks and your leading man is awful, your franchise doesn't have much hope."

I wrote those paragraphs a bit less than two years ago as a part of my Transformers: Dark of the Moon review that I published on Facebook (spoiler alert, that movie was shit), and to the most part, I stand by them. Having had more of a chance to get familiar with the Star Trek franchise (albeit not to the level of serious fandom), I can definitely see why the franchise earned its place among sci-fi and pop culture. There have been rough patches and bad spots, but generally the series had some respectable concepts and occasional moments of absolute brilliance.

And really, so much of my admiration of the Trek franchise comes from two factors: the embrace of intelligence and philosophy in the plotting (at least in the better episodes); and the thematic undercurrent of futuristic utopianism. Star Trek, unlike some of its counterparts, tended towards an optimistic belief in humankind, that we as a species were good enough to go where no man has gone before, that we could indeed begin to colonize the galaxy.

And then J.J. Abrams reinvented the franchise as a popcorn action flick for the lowest common denominator.

And you know, as much as I strongly disagree with Abrams being selected as the director of the upcoming Star Wars film, I'd take him as a director there over Star Trek any day of the goddamn week, mostly because Star Trek is a franchise that at least tries to have more intellectual heft than Star Wars. To see a franchise like Star Trek boiled down to an at-best action blockbuster isn't just bad, it's depressing. It reflects the state of modern action movies, which has absolutely no faith in the intellect of its audience, and where elements of legitimate science are tossed aside in favour of ridiculous action setpieces that can only hope to make some vestige of sense on a good day. It gets even worse when I saw The Daily Show interview with J.J. Abrams where he flat-out admits he didn't like the original Star Trek series because it was 'too philosophical' - that's the fucking POINT! It's science fiction, and so much of science is inherently linked to philosophy that when you strip away the philosophy, you lose the rich undercurrent of meaning that made the Star Trek movies at least engaging! 

And frankly, that's one of the reasons J.J. Abrams has never endeared himself to me as a director of anything - because I look at him and I don't see anything besides some decent technical chops in direction and writing. Yes, the man can write a decent homage and build a decent mystery. But so many of the pay-offs to those mysteries are so limp and lacking in meaning that all the weight of his films gets sucked out the airlock. As a filmmaker, I have no goddamn idea what Abrams is trying to say or any underlying philosophy behind his work, and as much as he clearly worships Spielberg, he has none of the genuine heart and optimism in his direction and composition that makes his movies feel like Spielberg. Looking at the great popular directors - Kubrick, Spielberg, Lucas, Mallick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese - all of them had deep thematic resonance in their films that made them stand out and mean something, damn it! There's a reason that so many gangsters began adopting Vito and Michael Corleone's mannerisms after seeing The Godfather, and it wasn't just because they 'sounded cool' - it was because on a subconscious level the performances and script had a resonant power and dignity and class that so many gangsters deeply desired.

Hell, take a look at the modern wave of directors. Shane Black, Neil Blomkamp, Michael Mann, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan, they all have something to say with their direction that can elevate their films. Hell, even fucking Michael Bay and Uwe Boll and Tyler fucking Perry have something to say through their direction and writing when they make films! Sure, it might be absolutely incompetent or repugnant, but at least it's something attempting to add weight and mood and atmosphere and meaning to what they put on screen. But with directors like J.J. Abrams and Tim Story, I see none of that ambition, none of that underlying philosophy that steers their camera. At best, I see technical proficiency - that's it. At worst, I see a complete misunderstanding and disregard of theme and symbolism, to say nothing of the intellectual properties from which their films are derived.

And coming back to Star Trek, it really doesn't help matters when you replace William Shatner (who isn't that good of an actor, but has had some great moments) with Chris Pine, the biggest walking dearth of charisma this side of Tyler Perry (who was, incidentally, in the Star Trek reboot in 2009). Coupled with a lightweight script and a forgettable villain, Star Trek is a film that might have satisfied box offices with impressive revenue, but did so by catering to the lowest of the cultural demographic.

But to be completely fair, Chris Pine has improved marginally as an actor in the past four years, and when buzz began to circulate that Benedict Cumberbatch (he of the magnificent Sherlock BBC series) would be joining the cast as the main villain, I was intrigued despite myself. Sure, I had no hope in J.J. Abrams as a director, and I had no illusions that the writing would be good, but at least they'd have to take the film in an interesting direction, right? They've already established the new cast, that'd mean we'd be forced to see character development now that the origin stories are out of the way. It couldn't be that bad, right?

Oh, I was wrong. It wasn't just that bad - it was worse than I ever could have imagined. In fact, Star Trek: Into Darkness stands as a colossal failure of a movie - and to discuss it, I'll need to go into deeper detail on why it fails, and that'll require spoilers, which I will place after the jump and/or the next several paragraphs. Like with Iron Man 3, you will have plenty of warning.

Let's start with the good. Most of the characters aren't bad - Karl Urban as McCoy, Zoe Seldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, and even John Cho delivers impressively as Sulu. The score is excellent, and for the most part, the film seems well-shot (although I'd still argue Abrams moves the camera around way too much and the lens flares do get aggravating). The dialogue can occasionally be witty or humorous, with Zachary Quinto's Spock getting some great laughs simply by giving Chris Pine's Kirk a look or simply due to some awkward silence (although I will say the audience I saw this film with was way too eager to give this film any sort of laughter, which was frustrating).

As for new characters, Peter Weller did deliver as the Starfleet Admiral, and it's always nice to see Robocop take the screen. And yeah, the inner Sherlock geek inside of me loved Benedict Cumberbatch's intense terrorist John Harrison and it was more than a little awesome to watch him kicking all amounts of ass. Cumberbatch is working his ass off here, trying to invest his character with as much depth and complexity as he can, and on a surface level, he's kind of awesome.

And that's also precisely where I have to stop talking about the good things and go into the real, disastrous problems with this movie (before discussing the spoilers that make me and other Trek fans scream bloody murder). For starters, as occasional beautiful as this film can be, it has a strange weightlessness to it that really threw me off, mostly due to the camera's gymnastics and the extreme overuse of CGI. I had a really hard time getting invested in the characters and the plot because too much of the direction stripped away the weight of the film. This comes from a major issue of pacing, which is half a problem of the script (I'll get to this) and half the issue of the editing, which is very choppy and doesn't allow the film to breathe in the slightest. Say what you will about the 2009 Star Trek movie, but at least it took the time to have slower moments and get acquainted more with the characters and what they think and feel. Into Darkness, on the other hand, feels rushed in the worst possible way, and has no idea how to build to a proper emotional climax. For a quick example, Kirk loses captaincy of the Enterprise and gains it back within ten, absolutely tension-less minutes, right at the beginning of the film.

Granted, any character development feels like it was blasted out the nearest airlock, because no character goes through the slightest bit of an arc in this film, or at least not one that hadn't been blatantly recycled from better movies, mostly from the 2009 reboot. Kirk's in particular feels like a major retread from the last film, with him learning absolutely nothing by the end of this movie. Now, I could typically overlook some of this, but Chris Pine's terribly wooden acting and the awful, awful script just make it shit-blisteringly obvious. I wouldn't be surprised that if at some point, they just copy-and-pasted dialogue straight from the previous movie.

And speaking of dialogue, this is also an issue where the script falls apart completely - mostly because nobody in this film talks like a reasonable human being!  Sure, you can get away with hammy dramatics (this is Star Trek, after all), but when you contrast it with the weak witticisms that feel forklifted in from your average sitcom, the tone completely collapses. And while Simon Pegg and Karl Urban play their characters damn near perfectly, neither of them are on screen long enough to save this film. The one thing that Cumberbatch does that's inestimably good for this movie is add real heft and emotion to his lines, so much to the point where his character was a lot more engaging than the rest of the film.  

And now I have to get to spoilers. No jokes, after this paragraph, I'm going to spoil every single one of the twists that Abrams piles into this shit and explain why they turn this film into the colossal pile of junk it is. If you want my advice, skip this movie. Sure, on the surface, it's the average popcorn flick and if you have an air-cooled brain and just want to watch flashing lights on the screen, you'll probably find this movie engaging. But if you're looking to think in this movie, or you're a fan of Trek at all, this movie isn't worth the heart palpitations you're going to get coming out of this movie. Do not see this, do not give Abrams any of your money to see this, do not validate his filmmaking or his 'mystery box' ethos of plotting. And I'm about to smash that mystery box apart in the next paragraph: you have been warned.

movie review: 'iron man iii'

The year was 2008, and arguably one of the best years for film nerds since 1982. I mean, between Tropic Thunder, The Dark Knight, WALL-E, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy 2, Rambo, that Punisher sequel nobody saw (and everyone should see - seriously, The Punisher: War Zone was surprisingly good). Hell, I even liked that Get Smart movie with Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway, and Dwayne Johnson, and while the fourth Indiana Jones movie was a trainwreck, it still made a ton of money that summer. 

But the surprise hit that nobody saw coming was Iron Man, and really, what reason did we have to be excited? A movie from the director of Elf, starring a washed-up SNL comedian who had spent years in a drug-induced burnout opposite a female lead who had squandered all of the likeability she had from her Academy Award for Shakespeare In Love in a series of completely uninspired performances? And all of this from a studio who had shown naked contempt for its intellectual property by licensing the Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox and hiring the semi-professional hack Tim Story to direct two horrendous movies? And all of this to tackle a franchise for a character who had never fronted a TV series and had never had much market penetration outside of the comics and a few solid sidescroller beat-'em-ups and arcade fighters?

It was the film that caught everybody by surprise, became one of the big hits that completely revitalized Robert Downey Jr.'s career in 2008 (the other being Tropic Thunder), and was the opening salvo of Marvel's attempt to bring comic book continuity to the big screen, a salvo that paid incredible dividends with the critical smash hit The Avengers last year. I don't think I can truly describe for you how much of a risk Marvel Studios was taking with this film, and the fact that it paid off so well is one of the biggest reasons the comic book blockbuster is now a major player in Hollywood.

And yet, the more I think about it, the less I like Iron Man. 

Not the movie, let me stress this - the movie remains extremely solid because it gets nearly everything it needs to right. Robert Downey Jr. is born to play Tony Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow brings surprising energy as Pepper Potts, Terrance Howard is surprisingly decent as Rhodes, and I always got a chuckle that Paul Bettany was playing JARVIS (the computer that runs Stark's manor). And what I like most about Iron Man is that it nails the human element so well - it's not afraid to show Tony Stark as the genius millionaire playboy who made his fortune selling weapons and behaving something of a dick, but also putting that character through real pain and suffering so he can grow. There are character arcs here, and the best parts of the film are when Tony is out of the suit and talking. And while the film has problems (I don't think Jeff Bridges is given quite enough to do, and the third act is more than a little anti-climatic), I still think it holds up incredibly well.

And thus it wasn't until Iron Man II that I started realizing my problems with the Iron Man character. Now, don't get me wrong, that film's perfectly serviceable too, nailing the same basic beats as the previous film with some great acting backing everything up, particularly from Don Cheadle (replacing Terrance Howard, arguably for the better) and especially from Sam Rockwell (who plays arguably the main 'villain' of the story). But it really does say something about Tony Stark as a character that I prefer the movie when it's focusing more on character development than all the splash and explosions.

But it's also here where I realized my issue with Tony Stark, and ultimately it ties back to a number of the factors that made him so popular in the modern world, along with his DC counterpart Bruce Wayne. In short, Tony Stark is a teenager who never grew up, and he is the wish-fulfilment fantasy of every engineering nerd man-child who idolizes him regardless. And with geek culture taking over so much of the world, it's no surprise this kind of character is popular - on the surface, he's an idealized fantasy, the 'genius millionaire playboy philanthropist', which the last word only thrown in to provide some vestige of maturity. But unlike Bruce Wayne, Stark chooses to tackle his parental abandonment issues with a mask of wry humour and a bottle of alcohol.

Now it's a credit to Robert Downey Jr.'s performance that this character turns out as likeable as he does (he could have very quickly turned into an asshole), mostly because Downey Jr. imparts some real empathy in his delivery. That said, there's a certain shallowness to Tony Stark's character, at least on the surface, that I don't think most of the audience picks up on - mostly because Tony Stark can really be a selfish, arrogant prick to people he doesn't care about, and occasionally to people he does care about. The frustrating part of Iron Man II is how much this element comes to the forefront, and even though it is a mask for his ongoing heart issues, it really becomes more than a little insufferable to listen through in the meandering second act of that film. 

And really, that shallowness seems to undercut all of the heroism Tony Stark advocates. Sure, he might be attempting to find world peace, but he's doing it to assuage his own ego, not for any higher purpose or mission statement. He's out for himself and the precious few in his inner circle, and you can tell he doesn't care much about anyone else. It's no surprise that Marvel Comics had him as the hero fighting Communists in the 60s, because that self-interest and naked embrace of capitalism make him a far more potent symbol than even Captain America in this regard. But all of that said, he's not a character I'd aspire to be, and while I know that it's always been part of Marvel's mission statement to write characters we empathize with (rather than DC's heroes which are meant to be inspirational), there are still a lot of young men my age who will completely embrace that shallow world view. Sure, it's a better view than Batman's schtick, but only marginally. 

And on that note, it's also why Tony Stark's arc in The Avengers worked so well - because he's forced to confront the death of a friend and thus must put aside his own petty self interest and give something of himself. It shows Joss Whedon's understand of the deeper elements of a character like Stark, and it also shows his willingness to push that character to grow and evolve. But with that in mind, what can come next? Where does Tony Stark go from here?

Well, in Iron Man III, we get an answer to that question, and while I wouldn't call it a completely perfect pay-off to Tony Stark's arc, I still think it's phenomenally strong in a way I never could have expected. But to explain it - and explain why I think this movie is pretty exceptional, all things considered - I'm going to have to spoil the entire damn plot of the movie. I also want to talk about the 'twist' regarding a certain character that's had comic-book fans in a frothing rage, but it's a twist I think is positively inspired.

So, spoilers after the jump (or about four paragraphs down), but let me talk about everything else regarding the movie. As always, the acting is great across the board. Robert Downey Jr. is inspired for the choice of Stark, Don Cheadle is awesome as Rhodes, and while I wish she was given more to do, Gwyneth Paltrow was pretty great as Pepper Potts. The surprising revelatory turns came from Guy Pierce and (of course) from Sir Ben Kingsley, both of them giving surprisingly multi-layered performances with some character beats I didn't quite expect. Hell, even the child actor who meets up with Stark during a period in the second act does a halfway solid job.

And I really do have to mention the directorial work of Shane Black, who was actually responsible for Downey Jr.'s original return to film in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a shockingly awesome little movie that came out in 2005 and remains one of the best directorial debuts  I've ever had the fortune to see. Shane Black spent a lot of time writing action-comedies, so he's a natural fit for Iron Man III, and his signature flair for fast conversation, a proper tonal balance, and the holiday season (it's hilarious how many of Shane Black's movies are Christmas movies) are a great fit for this film.

Any big criticisms that I have? Well, it's not a perfect movie by any stretch: there are moments of CGI that don't quite click (heads don't always seem to fit well on the bodies against the green screen), the ending of the film feels a bit rushed, and the film has a few pacing problems that a tighter screenplay could have alleviated. A bigger issue is that these pacing problems feel like a lack of narrative momentum, which has been a frequent criticism of Shane Black's work, in that events don't always seem to flow well or they happen by coincidence. In particular, the number of malfunctions that occur with Tony's armour do get a little exasperating and hard to believe, particularly considering the majority run on the chest arc reactor (which is supposed to be pretty damn solid for this sort of thing). And while the film does have its moments of slowdown and comedy, I think that some of the moments could have been better placed to allow more breathing room. And as with all of the Iron Man movies, it could have done without a few of the gratuitous action sequences - these movies, funnily enough, work best as character pieces, and I would have liked to have seen more from the various characters like Rhodes and Potts and Guy Pierce's character Killian outside of the special effects.

So yeah, definitely go see this movie if you're on the fence about it, but you might have noticed that I didn't really mention Ben Kingsley. There's a reason for this, and to talk about him, I need to talk about the plot of this movie and why I think it ultimately works. Spoilers are incoming next paragraph: you have been warned.

movie review: 'pain & gain'

I've spewed a lot of vitriol against Michael Bay in the past. I've called him a hack, I've openly criticized his cinematography and stylistic tendencies for being lowbrow and shameless, and I've accused him and his screenwriting cronies for ruining the Transformers franchise, to say nothing of the horrible, horrible slasher film remakes that his cohorts at Platinum Dunes keep churning out. And that's not even getting into his fetish for all things military and masculine.

But even with all that, I can admit that there is something about the man that if he's placed in the right environment, he can work as a director. The Bad Boys movies worked in this regard and (arguably) so did The Rock, less as deconstructionist pieces and more as direct wires into certain parts of the masculine psyche, which tend to alienate critics but draw in the cultural demographic that tends to make his movies a massive success. 

But the odd thing that I've always found with the movies Bay has actually cared about (Transformers is a franchise he has admitted he's only doing for the money), it's hard to draw the line whether or not Bay empathizes with his meathead characters or wants us to openly despise them as much as he does, putting every inch of their depravity on screen for us to either ogle or recoil away. To some extent, I think he's intending for us to do both, and that can make for a fascinating watching experience, particularly when he hires good actors to play the part.

And so I approached Pain & Gain with a certain amount of trepidation, but at the same time a bit of hope. This film has been a passion project Bay has been trying to make for years, put together on a minuscule twenty million dollar budget with all the actors taking pay cuts to participate. In fact, the only reason Pain & Gain got released at all was because Bay agreed to make another Transformers movie to give Paramount another ridiculous pile of money that those films bring in like clockwork. 

So this is a film Bay has fought for, a labour of love, a story that he had to tell and put on screen, probably one of the truest expressions of Bay as an artist. How does it fair?

movie review: 'spring breakers'

Last summer in about June, I wrote 'Last Call', a short story that was published in this anthology. 

I wrote that story when I was unemployed, amidst a listless haze of bizarre art films, channel ORANGE by Frank Ocean, and the discography of Ke$ha. It's a story of a girl named Natalie who goes to a nightclub and experiences a bloody, terrifying surrealist nightmare, complete with drugs, alcohol, and far, far worse. It's not an easy story to read - I know this - and the common responses from people who have read it are 'I didn't get it' and 'it's really dark and disturbing'.

Yeah, it is. It's dark, and disturbing, and since it's partially based on truth, it's more than a little personal. It's the kind of story I had to write, if only to finally put to bed some of the darker memories of my past. But while I was writing it and trying to get inside the head of my protagonist and everyone she encounters, I felt a sick jolt of realization: that there's something deeply, perversely wrong with my generation. It's not something that can entirely be explained, even though I'll try in this review. And while many have pointed the finger at us for being the progenitors of it all, we were not the only forces shaping it. After all, we're all shaped by culture in some way, and it's very rare that we're the ones creating the culture that shapes us.

And the fact that Spring Breakers, the new Harmony Korine film starring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine, is able to so aptly cast, vivisect, and place that wrongness on display... It is incredible and more than a little terrifying. It's one of the best goddamn films of the year, and deserves to be held up the heavens as a cultural touchstone of my generation. And yeah, I know that's a damning indictment but I don't fucking care, it's an indictment that needs to be made. It's an indictment I've made and I'm willing to include myself as one being indicted. 

It's 'Last Call', except where I optimistically saw a painful way out, Harmony Korine has a much bleaker, bloodier view.

movie review: 'les miserables'

No, I haven't seen The Hobbit yet. Or Skyfall. Or Argo. Or Lincoln. Or Django Unchained. Yeah, I went to see the big 'epic' movie on the big epic musical instead, and you can all shut up about it, okay? Good.

Now, it's something of a routine when discussing film adaptations of books, tv, video games, stage musicals - hell, anything - to first clarify what one thinks of the source material. And considering Les Miserables is adapted from a stage musical based upon a good albeit ponderously long and at points excruciating novel written by Victor Hugo, I think I need to clarify at least my stance when it comes to the Broadway show, which was one of the most iconic of the 1980s and emblematic of the 'epic musical'. Les Miserables is a gargantuan Broadway show spanning several hours, multiple decades of history, a cast of dozens of characters, and took place on a gigantic spinning stage several meters in diameter. And while I've never seen the show live, I have heard multiple renditions of the entire score and soundtrack that have been produced over the years. And my opinion out of that?

The stage musical Les Miserables is good. But it is not great.

Part of the problem is the source material - Victor Hugo's mammoth tome could probably only be properly adapted in a full-length TV miniseries, and even I would argue the musical does it best to capture the varied personalities and tones and themes for which Hugo was going. But in terms of narrative pacing, Les Miserables the stage musical is a mess, culminating in an ending that is stodgy, arduous, and goes on way too long. And while I will say there are elements of the musical that are impressive and epic, technically there are elements of the songs in Les Miserables that have always irked me, where there are points the lyrical meter isn't as smooth or flowing or organic as it could be. Yes, there are points where you can overlook the lyrical clumsiness because goddamn it, Les Miserables is going for broad and epic and sweeping and you get sucked along with the tide and it's glorious... but at other points, it feels clumsy and jerky and not particularly elegant. Musically, it's most apparent in the use of the shitty grating synth keyboard most of the stage adaptations used, but thankfully later stage adaptations and the movie excised this element.

So, enough yammering around the issue: what do I think of Les Miserables, the movie?

Well, I'll be blunt: the movie Les Miserables is good. But it is not great.

transgression, sensitivity, and art: a discussion

So the Grey Cup, the final game of the Canadian Football League, is wrapping up as I write this. I honestly don't give a damn about who won either way, but watching the Twitter feed, I did notice a few things that struck my interest regarding the half-time show. First was antipathy, given as Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen were cited as performers. Now, promoters, I get that these two are some of the biggest names in Canadian pop radio right now, but you have to realize that they aren't exactly the kind of acts you want for a championship football game. Personally, I think a rock act would be a lot better. Hell, Gordon Lightfoot, who also performed, would be a better choice, if only because he'd have more name recognition amongst an older Canadian crowd. 

And incidentally, I saw all the tweets ripping on Lightfoot and asking for Bieber to come back on stage - on the one hand, they don't know any better, but on the other hand, it's still fucking infuriating. Diversify your tastes in music, youth of Canada, and stop proving all of my suspicions about your generation correct!

But besides that point, the final act was a small step in the right direction with Marianas Trench. Now, granted, Marianas Trench are a pop rock act that probably has a fair amount of overlap with Bieber's audience, but they put on a good show and they are a pretty solid act. So when I checked out Twitter, I was expecting to see the typical fangirl squeeing.

Instead I saw a number of tweets accusing Marianas Trench of making fun of people with speech impediment by performing their song 'Stutter', a song from their 2011 album Ever After.