Spoiled Reviews

Everybody wants a little Angelina Jolie during the hot summer months. So here’s our Spoiled Review of Wanted, which should quench your thirst for all your Jolie jollys. It also has, like, curving bullets, crazy slo-mo chase scenes and whatnot. All you fans of the comic check out the review to see if it stays faithful. Everyone else, well clicking is cheaper than a ticket, right? See you soon.

Never has a robot’s life been so endearing, nor so topical. “Wall-E” is the tale of a Waste-Allocated Load Lifter, Earth class, who seems to be the last remaining ‘bot on earth. Actually, the last remaining anything on earth: Pixar’s predictions for 2700 are dark ones.

Earth’s surface is blanketed in smog, and trash fills every square inch of space. There are piles that scrape sky-high, and from a distance they tower like the New York skyline. It is clear that Wall-E has been at work for hundreds of years, scooting up trash into his compactor-belly and popping out the towers’ building-blocks, one by one.

He’s the last functioning robot in a world littered with remains of other Wall-Es, and, despite his mechanical make-up, is the most alive, or at least the most animated, thing left. People have long ago vacated the surface of the planet to live on a flying pleasure cruise that can stay in space indefinitely, and plans to.

Over the years Wall-E has developed a personality that teems with curiosity. He spends all day sorting through another man’s trash to find his own treasures, and we watch with glee as he experiments with fire extinguishers and paddle-balls, finding countless diamonds in the rough, even if he is only interested in their jewel cases.These are the kinds of things at which Pixar excels: taking an anthropomorphized creature and giving it new toys to play with.

And while Pixar is doing the things it is good at, “Wall-E,” both film and character, is idiosyncratically irresistible. The small eye-movements as they tilt and focus, the miniature windshield-wipers that keep them clean, the constantly shifting tread-wheel feet, everything is designed with such care and precision that it goes almost unnoticed, it’s that perfectly, undeniably human.

One day Wall-E discovers something unique to his world: a little bit of green. It’s a plant, growing snugly in a boot, and suddenly everything turns upside down. A new robot is delivered to the surface of the planet (one that seems to imply Apple has survived safely into the 28^th century). She is white and sleek, with a glowing display front, and has been sent to earth for Wall-E’s plant, which he is happy to share so long as she’ll return his wayward glances.

But she knows nothing of love until Wall-E begins to coax her out of her shell. Too late, and Eve’s transport ship returns to snap her up and bring her back to the flying spaceship that houses the remaining humans. Wall-E goes after her, hitching a ride on her transport hauler.

He reaches the human habitat, which is run by “Buy N’ Large” the corporation conglomerate of the future. People have become sad sacks of skin, four-hundred-pound, soft-bellied slugs that ride around on floating hover chairs and gaze blankly at the cell-phone screen projected in their faces. Wall-E, despite finally being surrounded by life, is still the only living thing in frame.

There are hundreds of robots who gamely carry out humans’ biddings, and the movie manages to nimbly walk the fine line between our xenophobia of robots with agency and our tenderness towards anything that can love. (Here the spoilers begin in earnest.)

The plant, it turns out, will enable the ship to return to earth, but only if the requisite bad robot can first be defeated. This robot, a glowing, red eye alá HAL of “2001: Space Odyssey” (look out for the hilarious send-up of the first-step sequence), turns out to be only carrying out the orders given it by humans.

It is overcome by the flip of a switch (from “auto” to “manual”) and the ship can begin its return.

Unfortunately, Wall-E is injured in the fray, and Eve has to rush him back home, where there are spare parts for his make-up. This plot movement makes for a compelling contemplation of whether the materials of composition house the soul. When all of his parts are replaced, is Wall-E still his own, endearing self? It is a kiss from Eve and a spark of life that bring the catatonic robot back to life.

The people disembark and begin to repopulate the world, building and growing lighter as the generations are depicted throughout the final credits. These credits are a wonder in themselves, tracing art history from cave paintings through impressionism to Atari-style pixels.

Pixar deftly maneuvers our emotions, and we happily hum along. They nod to their ability to capture our hearts, and we never feel we’re being manipulated, even when we are. This is another of Pixar’s gifts, and, ultimately, so is “Wall-E.”

M. Night Syamalan’s latest movie has the audacity to come out on the unlucky date if Friday the 13th. As does the attempt to reintroduce the Hulk to the world. Scary. Here is our review of The Happening, with plenty of spoilers for anybody who likes trashing Shyamalan on internet boards but doesn’t want to fork over 8 bucks to see the flick for themselves.

“The Incredible Hulk” a review in dialogue,

Spoilers intact from your friendly Spoiled Reviewers

Brian: I have to say, I thought that was the correct movie. Decent storytelling, good cast, great action.

Cecilia: Not at all like 2003’s “Hulk” by Ang Lee, who foolishly tried to make a movie with a plot and all.

Brian: Hulk smash instead of Hulk brood.

Cecilia: And this was definitely of the former variety. What I don’t understand is why plot and Hulk smash can’t coexist. Movies can have both food for thought and candy for eyes, but I was bored to eye-rolling by this.

There’s a moment when the big green (screen) Hulk pauses as his nemesis Abomination swiftly recovers from the latest onslaught. The Hulk looks directly at the camera and sighs, rolling his eyes, clearly wondering “Really? is this still going?” That was one of the few moments I really connected with the characters, because I was feeling the exact same way.

There is nothing interesting about watching two big CG things duke it out; we know CG creatures are physically capable of absolutely anything, because they are pointedly not actual physical beings. I don’t understand the allure.

Brian: Maybe not so much when those two fought, but there was certain amount of reality to the feel of the movie. When the Hulk flipped a car over, ripped the engine block out and threw it at a Hummer, it felt real. It wasn’t a green painted body builder making man-shaped holes in brick walls. There’s some value in that. There was more destruction than in Ang Lee’s movie. It was fun to watch.

Cecilia: Not for me, I was bored, borderline bummed by the tiresome action sequences. It was one extended chase sequence that went on far too long, said nothing about anything, and gloried in its own uselessness. It was a boys and their toys movie, which I am very easily entertained by, but found had even less substance than usual. Though I did laugh out loud when he used two halves of a police car as Sock’em Boppers.

Brian: That was literally straight of a Hulk video game.

Cecilia: We know now we are firmly in the age of He-Man: product-placement tie-ins come first, then we can worry about content. I got that sense pretty strongly throughout, especially at the end when they started building for the sequel. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) talks to General Ross (William Hurt), Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) gets all green- and smiley-eyed, and we cut to black. It was as if the studio execs were looking us straight in the eyes saying: OK, we’ve entertained you for two hours, buy our next item!

Brian: They did that in Iron Man, as well, after the credits.Tony Stark meets Nick Fury.

Cecilia: Right. It all felt so pointless.

Brian: In a way, these two movies were just really long trailers for the Avengers movie, and speaking as a hulking nerd, that actually does matter.

Cecilia: But is that what we want? Movies that don’t stand alone, on their own merit?

Brian: I would argue Iron Man did.

Cecilia: Yes, agreed, but “The Incredible Hulk” felt like one tedious sprint to get the finish line to hand the baton over for the next tedious sprint.

Brian: But that’s what us nerds want to see. We like the sly references to the Super-Soldier program, that hint that Captain America is coming. This is a comic book movie after all. Marvel has a lot invested in this franchise. Frankly, making another Hulk movie after the terrific tanking of the last one was going to be a dangerous sell. They had to do a little fast footwork.

Cecilia: Fast and loose. That’s why they made a Hulk smash movie instead of a Hulk think movie. And is it fair for Hollywood to cater solely to the nerd contingent? I’ll admit to being one, as well, but I was still bored.

Brian: I can’t really argue with that; I enjoyed the smashing. Ed Norton is always interesting. Tim Roth and Tim Blake Nelson were doing enough weird stuff that it felt like really high budget TV. And Liv Tyler, I mean, I could watch her cook grits for two hours

Cecilia: She is an incredibly attractive woman…which seems to be the only prerequisite for the job. I was annoyed by her fawning presence, even while I drooled over her.

The one other woman, that female military peon, was killed off pretty quickly by the Abomination. When she first came on screen I thought “Well, at least there’s one woman there who’s not shrieking or mothering,” which was entirely negated when Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) stabbed her, saying “I always thought she was an annoying bitch, anyway.”

Nelson, however, was great. You could tell the writing was bad by how hard he had to work to be great.

Brian: The dialouge was pretty stilted and I’ll agree that they didn’t do much in the way of characterizing the Hulk. Ed Norton as Bruce Banner was believable, but it seemed the only weapon the writers had in their arsenal for humanizing the Hulk was to have him shout at the sky. It happened about five times too many.

Cecilia: Five at the very least. We get it. He doesn’t like clouds. Move on.
But while the Hulk’s main emotion is, of course, blind anger, the computer-animated version had a few moments of other feelings, running the gamut from peeved to miffed. The digitalized emoting actually is getting better and better.

Brian: True, though there was nothing in this so touching as Ang Lee’s Hulk wandering through the desert looking for solitude only to be unfairly interupted by the military. I think they had to go so far away from that first movie that the emotional side of the story become a hinderance. But they solved other problems by bringing the action early and often.

Cecilia: The way they seem to solve many problems in Hollywood.

Brian: That’s not a problem for me when your main character is a green mass of rippling muscles. I am hoping they re-edit the movie for DVD release and give us Ed Norton’s full script, see what that looks like.

Cecilia: You’d think after such well-documented (by Norton) meddling, it would’ve been better. Do you know how many of his edits got through?

Brian: His cut was around 134 minutes and the real movie was 20 minutes shorter. I imagine they didn’t cut another action sequence.

Cecilia: How much vocals of Norton and Roth do you think actually went into the grunting noises? A quick look at IMDb.com says Lou Ferrigno (the original Hulk of the TV show) did the Hulk’s voice. He actually had a little cameo as a security guard, which was funny.

Brian: I thought the movie owed a lot to the TV show. Banner wandering through the countryside; hiding and surviving.The soundtrack even quoted the famous ending credits piano music. Granted most of the target audience only knows that music through Family Guy, but it was one of several fun, pop culture nods.

Cecilia: There were a lot of moments like that, notably Stan Lee showing up here (as he did in “Iron Man”) for a cutesy cameo.

Brian: He shows up in most of the Marvel movies. I guess the whole thing comes down to the fact that I grew up with the Hulk. Granted he was in his massive but still brilliant incarnation and written by Peter David, but I’ve enjoyed most iterations of the character since, especially the angry destructive force of nature presented in this movie. I feel sorry for Ultimates fans who won’t get a direct translation of the comics in an Avengers movie; the Hulk has already torn through New York and I doubt they’ll wanna do that dance again. Not that I ever thought they would villainize the Hulk to the degree they do in that book in a major motion picture.
Watching this movie I got superficial pleasures from the film itself, but a deep heartfelt joy from the message it sent. Marvel is being very careful in bringing their A-listers to the screen. The Avengers will almost assuredly be better than whatever happens with that abortion of a Justice League movie Warner Bros. is planning.

Cecilia: I love the Justice League.

Brian: Well I would be excited too if they weren’t recasting Batman and Superman and if I didn’t get the distinct feeling that the Wonder Twins might show up.

Cecilia: FORM OF….INCREDULOUS REVIEWER.

We realize that the new James Bond flick is still 22 long weeks from release, but we can’t wait and thought you loyal readers shouldn’t have to either. So to pass the time we’re reviewing every single James Bond movie in release order, one each week until we can the spoil the new one for you. We know there were a few non-EON produced films, (namely the comedic Casino Royale and the Thunderball remake Never Say Never Again) but we’ll figure those out as we go. We start things off with the iconic first film, Dr. No the one that started it all. Sure few expected this movie budgeted at about $1 million to gross almost $60 million worldwide but no one could have seen the character and franchise going strong 45 years later. Heres to another 45.