Rock It Like You Stole It: The Bling Ring and Its Killer Argument for Sociopathy

"Yeah, we're hot shit. You don't have to like it. We don't care. We love it."

Rebecca Anh is a badass.

As the head of the eponymous Bling Ring in Sofia Coppola's fictionalized account of the smash-and-grab queens and king of Calabasas who stole millions in clothes, trinkets, and trash from Young Hollywood between 2008-2009, ice water doesn't run through her veins because those suckers are probably beyond frozen.

Rebecca, played wonderfully by Katie Chang, is cool in the way that I haven't seen since, maybe, Denzel's performance as Frank Lucas, truly his most glorious riff on Alonzo Harris since Training Day. She is the heartless, ambitious, amoral gangster fantasy reshaped into a delicate frame that cares more about Louboutins than Pinstripes. She is unflappable. She is confident. She is sociopathy personified. And I love it.

We don't see characters like Rebecca as much as we used to in the days when the gangster film ruled the screens. Great work like Goodfellas and the Sopranos humanized organized criminals to the point that they became so relatable that they were no longer threatening.

Shute, the last time we had a character even remotely close to Rebecca Lee was Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas. Now, there was the definition of a smooth operator, at least on film. Neither Frank Lucas nor Rebecca Lee are particularly accessible or relatable to the average moviegoer. They're too detached, too above it all. They're probably not even be aspirational figures to another segment of the audience--again too reticent, not pretentious or flashy enough--but they are something else. They are not what any of us want to be but something we all wish we could be at all times: cool.

Yes, they do terrible things. They steal. They poison. They destroy. But these are actions borne of an an understanding of the world that is simultaneously deeper and lesser than any of us will ever know. They understand that nothing's fair and rules are inconveniences. They comprehend the simple fact that taking what they want is more than acceptable its essential. It is a sad truth that so many of us know so wheel, but mostly as victims. Yet, to see these characters do such things, often at the expense of the self same members of society that would do the same to us, and to do so without blinking an eye, well, that taps right into an ugly little truth at our core: if we could take what we wanted and hurt nobody, or at least those who can take care of themselves, we would probably do it.

That ethos is what makes The Bling Ring such a great film. The teens thieves in The Bling Ring are vapid, shallow and obsessed with things that absolutely don't matter, but I'm typing this on an iPad that millions of people have or want because luxury, however ephemeral, is intoxicating. The Bling Ring is our id, but trendier. It reflects a part of us that some of us don't want to acknowledge and others actively rail against. But, that part of us is in there, creeping right along the edges our psyches anytime we see a free dollar in the street or a bargain basement sale of designer brands or high-end electronics. To see that story writ large-ish, is unquestionably cathartic.

Much has been made in various articles about Coppola's view of her subjects. Does she deplore these kids who she swears she didn't want to make any more famous? Is she ambivalent? Is she mad as hell that they managed to get one over on her and the other 1%? Is she ashamed that she probably would have done the same thing if given half the chance when she was their age? She is possibly all of these things, and so are we. That is why it works. It taps into the fact that many of us feel equally ambivalent, reviled, and entranced by these kids. The fact that it is more cohesive, detached, and low-key than Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers doesn't hurt, though Spring Breakers clearly benefitted from James Franco's dynamite performance as a more electric version of the sociopath who leads a handful of misguided teen girls astray. The Bling Ring emanates cool, the kind these kids would want to be, the kind we don't often get amongst the over-eager bombast of the summer. 

The Bling Ring is the second film I have seen this summer that I have desperately wanted to see more than once. The first? Fast and Furious 6. Another flick about cool, but decidedly more hotblooded and noticeably less hip, criminals living life by their own rules, even if its a dumb rule like living life a quarter mile at a time, and taking what they want (though less so in this entry than the last). 

These two movies are worlds apart, but at their core they are about criminals who are patently, unrealistically unafraid to live outside of law and society's rules. Criminals who are supposed to be deplorable, despicable, but are oh so enticing because they are a little bit of who we don't want to be and a lot of who we are. 

Man of Steel, Superhero Cinema, The Fun Police, and the War on Hope

"Your girl sent you to Glamour Shots too?"

I liked The Dark Knight, and I'm pretty sure that's only because I loved Heath Ledger's Joker.

The Joker was a livewire who brought more life  to The Dark Knight with his batshit rumblings than any other character or plot development. He was the clown prince made "real"in a way that never betrayed the characters roots as a four-color creation. He made The Dark Knight far more entertaining than any other entry in the trilogy.

In fact, The Dark Knight is the only entry in the Dark Knight trilogy that I own. Not that the other entries aren't thoughtful, exquisitely crafted films; it's just that they're a tad...boring. They're so adult, so cerebral, so overpopulated with pontification, so crippled by an attachment to "reality" that it makes the more fantastic elements seem silly and the narrative shortcuts glaringly obvious. Worst of all, they elevate plot so high over character that the driving force behind these narratives--the iconic characters and their specific characterizations--get lost in the shuffle.

Case in point: Man of Steel.

Man of Steel is, despite some crucial chaos in the climax, a perfect example of a similar type of 

experience because it spends about fifty percent of its runtime on long shots and speechifying from Supermans multiple fathers designed to convince the Superman and the audience that he is destined to be Space Jesus. the whole destiny angle robs Supes of a lot of agency and pushes the "Supes-as-an-outsider" angle to the forefront. While this would likely be a prominent conflict to young Kal-el, it is not the most uplifting or aspirational or entertaining conflict for Superman to deal with. It is so internal and hard to visualize that it makes Superman appear more mopey than he is.

Then, as if to reward viewers for sitting through a dour hour, director Zack Snyder and company send Supes out to play Dragonball Z with a bunch of bad guys on the streets of Smallville and Metropolis. Hundreds, thousands, probably millions of innocent lives are lost, and Superman only seems to care about six people: a random family of four, Ma Kent, and of course, Lois Lane. Poke around the net and you'll see that this is a major source of consternation to fans, critics and creators, especially the folks at Badass Digest and Superman Birthright writer and modern comic writing legend Mark Waid. 

"Yes, that's a building coming at you. No, this isn't Transformers."

I can't blame them for being concerned. I'm no purist, but I know that Superman always goes out of his way to save lives and -- SPOILER ALERT -- he does his best to avoid killing.

Most importantly, he smiles. He's not as funny and quick as Spidey or as snarky as Shellhead or as exasperated as the Thing--no, the Marvel heroes don't take themselves that seriously that's just the sourpusses at DC, Flash excluded.

"Dude, you can fly. Lighten up."

But, in Zack Snyder, David Goyer, and Christopher Nolan's Man of Steel, Supes comes off as glum, reckless, and slightly vengeful mostly for the sake of the narrative they want to tell. And that is their right, but I wonder if maybe movies like the Avengers, which isn't that much better in mitigating casualties, can't open film makers eyes to a different way to approach the comic book narrative. One in which character comes first and reality is left behind.

Superhero movies are based on source material that is so inherently fantastic that it requires a suspension of disbelief on par with the suspension of disbelief applied to pro wrestling. Short of abandoning all pretense of super heroics and daring-do, there's no way filmmakers can make superhero flicks that aren't fantastic to the point of silliness, so they may as well embrace the amazing, the spectacular, and the uncanny. 

There's little to no chance of grounding something like this in reality, so why try?

Seriously, despite Nolan's best interests with the Dark Knight series, the fact that Bruce Wayne dressed up like a bat rather than dressing like the Punisher shows that there was no way to avoid a very silly conceit and still have the series be considered a Batman adaptation. Ditto for the story of alien space Jesus who can hurl mountains or the man in roboarmor or the green super-Jekyll or the kid in the spider outfit.

I'll never forget how the first Arkham video game, despite its occasionally brutality and grotesque "grim and gritty"-ness, was such a welcome counterpoint to the Nolanverse. While Nolan's approach to the Batman legend is as welcome as any interpretation, Rocksteady's Arkham games did such an excellent job of melding the fantastic and the "real" that I couldn't help but prefer them over the Dark Knight films, mostly because the developers at Rocksteady were limited only by their imaginations, the limits of the technology, and the DC Comics vanguard. 

Rocksteady acknowledged the fantastical properties of Batman's world and embraced it. They recognized the importance of the characterization of the cast, granted Batman will always be a stick in the mud, but that's his way, and emphasized those outsized qualities when creating solidly entertaining  characters. Rocksteady's vision may not be perfect--a little less misogyny would be nice--but it is a great example to creators of all stripes, particularly filmmakers on the next swath of superhero flicks.

Grounding this in reality is only slightly easier, but not by much.

To the filmmakers who are working on or will work on superhero flicks, I encourage them to embrace the silliness. Embrace the fun. And let the heroes have some fun to. Let them smile, like Christopher Reeve did. Let them snark like Tony or sling jokes as fast as webs like Spidey. Let them banter like the Avengers. Let them be more than soapboxes with dish towels around their necks.  Let their words flow forth like humans not philosophy treatises. Let their burdens be based on the struggle to do the right thing when it seems like their bodies or minds or spirits wont let them. Let them be human, like us, so their moments of sacrifice mean so much more to us.

Superheroes are great as aspirational figures, but if they lose the fun and the humanity then they will lose the audience. These are fantastic myths, plain and simple. They are metaphors for reality. They are not reality. They are stories that allow the storytellers to show humanity how great it can be, even if it uses crazy tropes like mad scientists, giant robots, aliens, and super soldiers to do it.

On that note, there's something else that gets lost in the translation from the four color realm to the silver screen: these are tales of heroism. They should be treated as such. 

I realize spectacle and bombast are par for the course in event movies these days, but at some point all parties involved, from the studios to the filmmakers to the audience have to really take a look at what these flicks are saying. We have to examine how close they hew to the aspirational and, yes, instructive nature of superhero fiction. These stories will last, and hopefully not always as corporate properties ( one can dream), and will exist as narratives that will show future generations how to rise above their limits and be better people. 

That said, can we cool it on the massive loss of life in these movies, or at least deal with it thoughtfully and responsibly. Yes, it may drag the fun down and shift the tone dramatically for more than a few moments, but having heroes stop punching and start protecting, or having them mourn the loss of people they will never know, will show that these heroes are compassionate, a key quality of a hero, and better than their enemies.

Now, this may be a hard road to travel for filmmakers as the very nature of filmmaking requires spectacle, bombast, and resolution, especially the modern blockbuster. But, the destruction in these flicks has to be tempered with the idea that superheroes are metaphors for virtues like selflessness and sacrifice. Those virtues are hard to see when superheroes are causing so much collateral damage that the body counts are as high as lottery pots.

"See, nothing wrong with a smile, as long as you're cool about it"

These heroes and their stories, however they are told, are some of the few weapons we have against cynicism and selfishness. They are some of our last weapons in the war against hope that the world keeps losing day by day. Don't let them fade away.

Our Avengers - Why The Fast and Furious is a Superhero Series for Everybody

"No. We don't need spandex. Our shirts are tight enough."

Last week I gave Furious 6 a bit of a hard time. Mostly because of the concentrated ridiculousness on display and the hammy writing, but that's to be expected from a Fast and Furious film. I still mostly thought it was an entertaining experience, and I have amended the review to reflect that.

I also mentioned that Furious 6, with its assemblage of heroes, is pretty much the multicultural equivalent of Marvel's Avengers. Indeed, as several reviewers have noted, The Fast and Furious is essentially a superhero series. And as silly and over the top as it is, I am glad we have it.

Hard as it is to believe, The Fast and the Furious franchise is the most important superhero franchise of the summer because its success can show Hollywood that audiences, both foreign and domestic, are far more colorblind and diverse than the studios care to admit.

In its decade plus existence, The Fast and Furious series has elevated the presence of people of color (POC) in franchise flicks by simply presenting "heroes" on screen who are not uniformly white males between 18 and 50. Granted, Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor was the audience surrogate and point of entry for the earliest entries, he is, by no means, the focal point of the series. Instead, Vin Diesel's ambiguously brown Dominic Toretto is unarguably the series anchor and one of its main draw. With 2 Fast 2 Furious, the series added an African-American lead in Tyrese's Roman and gadget man Tej (Ludacris). The third entry, Tokyo Drift, brought Asian character Han (Sung Kang) into the fold. Fast and Furious may have refocused on Dom and Brian, but it also added Hispanic characters played by Don Omar and Tego Calderon as well as reminding audiences about Michelle Rodriguez's Letty, one of the few Hispanic characters to remain present in some shape or form since the 2001 original. That's not even counting Eva Mendes' Monica from 2 Fast 2 Furious and Gal Gadot's vaguely Middle Eastern Gisele. Fast five brought most of these characters back together and added another major non-white character in Dwayne Johnson's Lucas Hobbs, and to a lesser extent Elsa Pataky's Brazilian cop, Elena. Now Furious 6 brings most of these characters back together, just as Fast Five did, in way that is not dissimilar to Marvel's Avengers with the main difference being that 90% of the team is non-white--the series' inclusion of women is not exceptional but it's a far cry above the average for big budget blockbusters, which makes the series significantly progressive by Hollywood's unremarkable standard. 

Truthfully, just getting one or two substantial roles for POC in a tentpole is a victory. Seven to nine substantial roles for POC in an multi-million dollar franchise is some kind of miracle. And what's particularly reaffirming about the characters of the fast and furious franchise is that, while they may have started as "criminals", they have evolved into full blown outlaw heroes, with a reasonable, mind you not Marvel level, cultural cache. That's important because non-white moviegoers can leave the theater after seeing a Fast and Furious movie as energized as they may have been after seeing Avengers but with the added bonus of seeing people who look like them and not having to think about what a Hispanic Thor, Asian Tony Stark, and Black Captain America might look like.

For all the strides the series has made in promoting diverse characters, it has also expanded its scope under Justin Lin's direction in a way that allows it to rival blockbusters like Avengers. Since the first entry, the series has gradually increased its scale, coming from a local story of LA drag racers to the misadventures of globe-trotting super Robin Hoods. The scope is so oversized that most recent entry offers as much destruction as the Avengers and Dark Knight Rises. The expanded scope has been and boon and a curse. In some ways, the increased scope has improved the focus of the later entries, giving each a unique genre flavor. On the other hand, the movies have become increasingly divorced from logic and reality as they embrace audacious, ridiculous stunts and set pieces. That may make the movies a bit of an affront to high-minded cineastes, but these movies were never designed to be insightful examinations of the human condition, and neither, despite our rose-colored instant nostalgia, was the Avengers. Movies like the entries in the Fast and Furious series are primed to make audiences pump their fists and enjoy a few hours of mental auto-pilot, and that's more than enough for most moviegoers. But making a big, ridiculous, profitable tentpole with massive set pieces, and doing so with a cast dominated by POC, is still a remarkable, reassuring feat, and it's more than we usually get.

What's the Use?: Star Trek Into Darkness and Mainstream Titillation in the Age of Free Porn

"No, I didn't like that scene one bit. Even in the 23rd century, the boys know they get a better peek online"

I have no idea who Carol Marcus is. 

All I know about her is that she dropped trough in front of Capt. Kirk for no good reason.

Damon Lindelof knows the same thing now. Months after filming and editing wrapped on J.J. Abrams Star Trek Into Darkness (STID).

Lindelof tweeted an apology and admission of misogyny to the public yesterday, and even emailed esteemed media news source MTV, with regards to a scene in STID where the aforementioned Marcus (Alice Eve), the Enterprise's new science officer who specializes in advanced weaponry (that from someone who was barely paying attention by the time Marcus hit the screen), drops her regulation Federation mini-skirt and abrasively chides Capt. Kirk for sneaking a peek at her 23rd century Victoria's Secret underwear set.

The scene has been jumping out at me since it showed up in a trailer a few months ago. Not because I was gobsmacked by Alice Eve's impressive physique or her lack of a flirty, impractical retro number, but because it seemed so out of place with the tone of the trailer, which was all vengeance, Zimmer horns, and quick cuts. I thought, "that's odd", and nothing of it beyond that. Then, I caught the Abrams 2009 Star Trek reboot on FX a few days ago, and it all made sense. In 209's Trek, no female character with a speaking role, save Krik's mother (Jennifer Morrison), made it to the end without a scene in their underwear. To be fair, Capt. Kirk also stripped down to the ol' BVDs at least once in both films, so at least there's some attempt a balance. However, the scenes from 2009 Trek and most of the scenes where Kirk has disrobed have clear, if flimsy in the case of the Uhura strip-down in Trek, context. Carol Marcus' scene, where she is changing into a deep space exploration suit lacks any. 

With Lindelof acknowledging what most clear-eyed viewers already know, the gratuitousness of the scene is widely, if not completely accepted. What is more baffling and distressing is that Lindelof, Abrams, and their collaborators think, or did not stop to think as it were, that this type of gratuitous titillation is necessary in era where any kid with an ipad can google Maxim, download the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and find uncensored clips of lesbian threesomes online without even trying. Their injection of a gratuitous scene hearkens back to an era where the only way to see some skin without skipping down to the Red Light District or slinking out of a corner store with a paper bag over a playboy was to catch it in movies like Barbarella or on TV shows like Star Trek. This line of thinking also recalls a time when there were no voices of discontent outside of the occasional editorial or snail mail letter to studios that was more than likely lost to the bottom of a canvas bin.

Granted, the Carol Marcus scene, as well as the three-way undie scene in the 2009 entry, could be viewed as a homage to the sexual undertones that permeated the original series, it falls flat in an era where audiences have easy access to titillation at a far more extreme and theoretically discrete level. It also appears distressingly tone-deaf in a time where audiences expect more from their entertainment. More and more, audiences are expecting even the slightest of entertainment to be intelligent and culturally competent. The voices that raise up against entertainment that falls short of these requirements is far from homogenous and, thankfully, far from silent. They recognize that, for decades, entertainment has catered to the whims of straight, white males between the ages of 18-50. While that demographic deserves entertainment, so do the rest of us. Not only do we want to be entertained, we want to be respected and acknowledged as intelligent, cognizant, capable consumers of entertainment. Fail to respect us, creators, and you'll find yourself apologizing on twitter.

Now, this is not to say that creators should avoid including scenes where characters traipse around in their underwear or strip down to their birthday suits, but please give these scenes context, give these scenes purpose. Most importantly, think before you do so that you don't appear like a tone-deaf, out-of-touch caveman after the fact. I want creators to succeed. I want them to take moments to cherish the human body and show that physical intimacy is best experienced through body to body contact, but I don't need to experience those moments through the, often white, male gaze all the time. Most importantly, and this goes out to those lovely folks in marketing and advertising as well, that demo that you're trying to reach with such gratuitous scenes like the Carol Marcus scene, they have desktops, laptops, and tablets, all of which allow them to stream porn and download lad mags anytime they want. They don't need you to provide them with cheap titillation, and they haven't for a very long time.

Furious Six and the Careless Propagation of The Ridiculous

"Are they serious?"  "I think so, but just keep smiling until we cash the check."

The guys behind us were the bullseye in the center of the target audience.

Two of them escaped from the set of COPS, with their gaunt frames, toothless grins, and oversized dayglo Akademiks hoodies and jorts.

Their benefactor was probably well outside of the coveted 18-34 demo, but mentally he fit right in. The only thing holding him back from being as raucous and garroulous as the knuckleheaded tagalongs beside him was the likely heart condition he was nursing, as signaled by fits of wheezing and a minute of labored breathing every time he climbed the steps to corner of the top row.

They were they type to ask for their money back from a free screening when the movie started to play sans sounds or subtitles tailor made for eighth grade readers. They were also proof that my cousin was right, "acting out and acting stupid has nothing to do with color and everything to do with class."

Once the sound was fixed and the cars, a black 2012 Challenger (that will always pale in comparison to the 70' original) and a silver GT-R, blared through the tunnel, speeding down a single-lane highway that winds around the mountainous landscape of the Canary Islands, they were hooked.

Of course that's how The Fast and The Furious 6, or Furious 6 as the title card at the end of the flick's TV-show style opening states, starts. With a growl. It continues with a succession of loud shouts and doesn't stop until midway through the credits.

Furious 6 grabs the attention of audiences like the folks behind us by excising cohesion, logic, or narrative intelligence and becomes the famed Set Piece showcase that cinephiles have prophesized since the rise of the blockbuster. Where Fast 5 was light, silly, generally focused, and vaguely purposeful. Furious 6 is the same, but far more audacious albeit much messier and far sillier. Does it tread into the realm of "so bad it's good"? No. It goes beyond such a distinction and rolls right into the realm of being so ridiculous that there's no way it can be anything other than entertaining.

This time, Texas Rocky (Dwayne Johnson as Lucas Hobbs), or Samoan Thor as Ludacris' Tej considers him, and Haywire (Gina Carano) conscript Dominic Ocean (Vin Diesel) and his band of merry thieves to help him bring down a team of ex-paramilitary "warriors" who are planning to steal a nuclear device with souped-up Indy Cars that with ramps built onto the frame, for the express purpose of flipping suckers. No bullshit.

So, rather than acknowledge that Torretto and his demo-specific rainbow crew--white (Paul Walker's Brian O'Connor); black (the aforementioned Ludacris and Tyrese's Roman, both all stars in this); asian (Sung Kang's Han); middle eastern (Gal Gadot's Giselle); and hispanic (Michelle Rodriguez's Letty and Elsa Pataky's Brazilian cop, whose name is irrelevant because...Letty)--are essentially criminals with hearts of gold who just happened to destroy lives and property in Rio for a cool hundred million, Furious 6 tries desperately to convince us that they are the "urban" Avengers by handwaving the less savory aspects of the characters and highlighting their heroics and devotion to family. In case you're unclear about that, check the slow walk pose poster of the heroes tagged onto the end of the opening.

Eschewing all evidence to the contrary, Texas Rocky believes these guys are heroes and gives them government funding and resources to take down the crew's military dopplegangers (a point thankfully lampshaded by Tej) led by the depressingly shallow Owen Shaw, played by the frighteningly charisma-less Luke Evans, who has proven that he should be kept as far away from Brandon Lee's legacy as possible with this performance. The hook? Michelle Rodriguez's resurrected Letty is one of Shaw's team. The twist? She can't remember anything about her past life.

To catch Shaw and bring Letty back to "The Family", Dom's crew must destroy London, and eventually Spain, with anything on four wheels they can get their hands on. There is a level of wanton death and destruction that surpasses even the climax of Fast 5, which is almost proof positive that few people in the industry, creatives or otherwise, understand that the basic purpose of heroes is to safeguard human lives. In truth, this destruction is limited to two major set pieces and a handful of physical encounters that demonstrate how nobody involved remembers that this movie series used to be about drag racers (see Tokyo Drift for the most on-target Fast and Furious movie about racing and youth culture).

Those set pieces are all that matters, and as the product of Justin Lin's wild imagination, they are the best evidence that he should be sending his reels to Kevin Feige and Marvel so he can get a shot at contributing to their blockbuster assembly line. This doesn't make him a great auteur--in fact, many of the action scenes raise more questions about Lin's ability to examine human consequence of such destruction more than anything else, but what action director hasn't made the same fundamental error--or anything like that, but any director who can come up with multiple stunts where mere humans jump from speeding cars across fifteen to twenty foot chasms deserves to play with bigger, flashier toys.

Screenwriter Chris Morgan, on the other hand, should really sit in a public place and just listen to people talk rather than reading the index of the Christopher Nolan Guide to Weighty Dialogue in a 21st Century Action Film. Expository to a fault, the script explains everything, even when the same information is shown within the same frame. The best example is the return of Nucky's brother (Shea Whigham) as a FBI agent and colleague of Brian's who gets his nose broken by Brian again in a practically unnecessary yet purely fanservice-y subplot. The character literally says "again", to help viewers whose memories and attention spans can't even reach back to last week's showing of Fast and Furious on USA. Unfortunately, the script structure works perfectly for audience members like the jolly fellows behind us, who repeated every moderately clever line, guffawed at the adolescent ribbing, and were absolutely flummoxed by the obvious turns in the narrative.

Despite its faults, Furious 6 is unquestionably a critic-proof crowd pleaser, and an astounding amount of credit goes to Tyrese and the usually wooden Ludacris for making Furious 6 far more palatable than it had any reason to be. They double-handedly saved this farce from devolving into pure, unadultered fandango. These guys deserve a buddy movie where they are a pair of good natured, ne'er-do-well thieves with a love for the high life. Tyrese, moreso than Luda, exemplifies the perfect response to the concentrated ridiculousness around him by laughing at the insanity and carrying on like a man who left his marbles at the door. Both he and Luda are quick with generally funny one-liners, followed by what appears to be an honest laugh at the silliness on display, yet Tyrese's Roman, with his insatiable hunger and toothy grin, hews closer to glib braggarts found in better criminal team-up movies like Ocean's 11. He and Luda stand in stark contrast to stone-faced Diesel, Walker, Rodriguez...almost everybody except for Rocky, on occasion, who are so busy playing phony tough and crazy brave to ever find a sliver of humor or inanity in their circumstance. And really, thank goodness for them. Granted, it kind of sucks to see the brothers reduced to comedy relief, especially with so many POC in the film, but without them, this would be an excruciatingly dour, yet still unintentionally hilarious, experience. 

Ultimately, this elaborate diatribe is meant to say one thing: this is a silly movie (maybe the most unintentionally hilarious flick this year). Take it for what it's worth. It's targeted at the back rows. The loud folks in the jorts and dated urban gear who spent fifty bucks on a small heart attack at the concession stand. The ones who aspire to ball in tricked-out super cars and stuff massive amounts of overdeveloped muscles into smedium tees while punching Renegade GI Joes into oblivion. In no way will this ever be confused for something designed for  the cineastes, but neither was The Avengers

Yet, Furious 6 is also aimed at the 13-year old in many of us who is absolutely tickled at superheroes in. If you can sit amongst the crowds described above, witness such ridiculous wonders as a man jumping from a moving car and catching another person then slaming into the windshield of another car, laugh, and cast them aside as adolescent diversions then enjoy. If you can absorb the audacious ridiculousness of Furious 6 and smile, like I did after I had a week to let it sink in, then have as much fun as you can with it. But, be warned, don't over analyze this flick. Don't even analyze it.  Leave that to silly people like me, who should know better. If you think to much about Furious 6, you will find yourself arguing with an idiot, and we know how that argument usually ends.

Oz: The Great, The Powerful...The Pimp

"[It] ain't easy, but somebody's gotta do it"

Sam Raimi's Wizard of Oz origin story may be about many things--the power of friendship, non-violent conflict resolution, the triumph of good over evil--but it's mostly about James Franco's Oscar Diggs, the eponymous Wizard, and his ability to charm every remotely attractive woman in the land of Oz.

First and foremost, Oz: The Great and Powerful is solidly entertaining, balancing just the right amount of razzle dazzle, heart, and humor to almost live up to the legacy of the 1939 original. From the opening frames, black and white with a 1.33:1 ratio, to the first panoramic views of pre-Dorothy Oz, widescreen and blinding color,  Raimi does great things with the story of the once and future Wizard. Diggs is not a man who at all seems destined for greatness, no matter how much he wants it; he is, instead, a louse, a charlatan, and a scoundrel, traits that all, not so incidentally, align with the older Wizard. The new wrinkle to this character, one that I'm sure Franco was all to eager to play up, is the womanizer angle.

Despite all the marketing highlighting the three female leads (Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams), it's almost a surprise that Diggs is such a ladies man, no less in a Disney blockbuster clearly targeted at females of all ages. This is not to say that Oz is a feminist nightmare or a misogynists dream; it's just such a killer, and frankly unexpected, angle that it becomes positively refreshing. How often, these days, do we get leads in tentpoles that are demonstrably, charmingly flawed, with the notable exception of Tony Stark (incidentally played by Robert Downey Jr. who was thisclose to playing Diggs). Franco does a superb job of playing Diggs, a sideshow magician and proto-Copperfield/Blaine/Angel, as the type conman who believes enough of his crap to be dangerous. He's also a bit of an ineffectual dolt, an angle that allows the female leads to dominate the film in ways that females rarely do in blockbusters.

Yet, for all the girl power on display, Oz is primarily a film about a man so enamored with his own myth that he practically wills it into actuality. On top of that, Diggs is a man whose mythmaking is fueled with an insatiable appetite for the ladies that he inadvertently--I hope--creates the engine of his "doom". This is played out with Mila Kunis' naive Theodora, a character who learns some very hard lessons about the callousness of charming men, a lesson that will be new to kids, the few who care, but painfully obvious and kind of humorous, in a skeevy way, to anyone over the age 16. The writing is on the wall as soon as Oscar and Theodora "dance" under the stars, a scene that kicks off the amazingly brash and consistent sexual innuendo that runs through the film in much the way double entendres were par for the course in classics like Breakfast at Tiffany's. With that masterstroke, Raimi does three things: he makes the female characters more vital to the narrative than they would be in a similar genre flick; he honors the charming, lighthearted, screwball style that was infectious to Golden Age cinema; and, he grabs the attention of adults in the audience who may have erroneously dismissed this fairly fantastic flick as kid's stuff.

Indeed, Oz the Great and Powerful is far from kid's stuff--the chuckles from the adults at every dirty-ish line that slides in beneath the radar are evidence of that--but it is still a fascinating and wondrous tale that hearkens back to an optimistic era where violence was not the sole source of conflict resolution in filmed narratives. It also recalls a time when Hollywood glamour meant something more than red carpet walks on Oscar night. Oz drips with the style and sensibilities of a bygone era, and it is better for it. i wish I could say I was surprised that Raimi pulled this off with such aplomb, but I'm not. He has shown audiences, since Evil Dead, that he has a deft grasp of genre and a true respect for the trappings of genre as well as a healthy respect for the classic notion of making films enjoyable and heartfelt, see Spider-Man 2, without delving into condescension and cynicism, something his contemporary, Tim Burton, could stand to remember. In fact, Burton and his much-maligned uber-blockbuster, Alice in Wonderland, will probably be on your mind as you leave the theater after seeing Oz because you'll be wondering will we see more of Raimi's Oz or Burton's Wonderland. Hopefully, we'll see more of the former and no more of the latter.

Stop Snitching or Don't - The Bosses Don't Care: A Look at Snitch

Omar smells what the Rock is cooking, but does he dare say anything about it?

WARNING: DISCRETION ADVISED - THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE LANGUAGE.

The kid in front of me clapped loud enough for everybody in the theater to hear as he yelled at the teen on the screen facing jail time for holding a few pounds of ecstasy for his friend:

"That's right. Don't be no fucking snitch."

It was the eighth thing he had yelled at the screen, and we were only ten minutes into the movie. He didn't stop until the four girls he came with forced him to leave ten minutes before the movie ended.

He was that guy. The loudest nigger in the room. The reason people, ourselves included, don't like to go to movies with us. Truthfully, he was to be expected. The theater was a few miles outside of Baltimore, and the movie was Dwayne Johnson's (Rocky, as us old-school smarks call him) latest, the first in a four-month stretch of Rocky actioners, Snitch, as divisive a topic as any in the cradle of  post-Mafioso Omerta. 

His outbursts recalled the days of Carmelo Anthony and the Stop Snitching "campaign" that made  anti-tattle-telling YouTube clips a viral controversy. But more than that, they reveal a mentality that permeates through every neighborhood where people, of any color or creed, adhere to a code made by people who would use, abuse, and snitch on others without compunction if it meant saving their hide or getting paid. Snitching isn't, as has never really been, the problem. the problem is the handful of disenfranchised souls who think that not snitching is going to make their lives any better in the eyes of a criminal element that treats them much like corporations and government organizations, the only difference being you die instead of getting fired.

It takes Snitch a good hour and a half to get around to that basic point,and when it does, it finally becomes a movie worth investing in. In Snitch, Rocky tries to flex the same acting muscle he did in Walking Tall, that of the decent man pushed into increasingly dire circumstances in an effort to save a young charge from the throes of the drug trade. This time, Rocky plays a Missouri trucking magnate turned government informant after his son gets caught in possession of enough ecstasy to warrant a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in the federal pen. With the help of Walking Dead's Jon Bernthal, as an ex-con trying to step lightly on the straight and narrow, Rocky attempts to outwit Susan Sarandon's conservative State's Attorney; the increasingly, egregiously typecast Michael K.Williams' small-time dealer; and Benjamin Bratt's stoic, barely believable Cartel kingpin to save his son.

For most of its runtime, Snitch plays like an extended arc of a "gritty" cable police drama, think Southland or The Wire minus the graphic anything. It is a slow-burn that treads desperately close to being boring because the plot is 80% setup, 20% execution. Director Ric Roman Waugh spends an almost inordinate amount of time imposing indie sensibilities on a late February action flick. Snitch is replete with long, quiet shots, grainy sound filters, and jitter-cam action sequences meant to evoke the realism of a tale purported to be based on true events (the plural is the key there). While this artistry and meticulousness contribute to some adequate character development and add some very necessary gravitas, it runs the risk of losing an audience that has entered the theater with a potentially negative perception of the subject matter.

See, Snitch lives and dies on perception. While the Brahma Bull does an admirable job of playing a man  who is both pushed to his limit and out of his depth, his wall-like frame, undeniable charisma, and the unavoidable perception associated with both prevent him from ever seeming truly outmatched. Rocky fails to seem truly threatened because audiences have been trained to never see him as a victim, no matter how much he jobs for the first fifteen minutes of his wrestling matches. When he walks into a Williams' spot in his first attempt to make a connect he can offer up to Sarandon, he is so massive and reticent that it's hard to believe he couldn't clear the room single-handedly. Perception. It's a mother. Omar knows.

But, there's a more acute issue of perception at work between Snitch and it's target demographic. Ideally, this flick is aimed squarely at males 13-35. Many of those males will be men of color. A fair amount of those men of color will probably come from lower-middle to impoverished neighborhoods. Neighborhoods where snitches are akin the most detestable vermin imaginable. Long story and snappy prose short: it's a bit of a hard sell.

This was obvious from the audience's push-pull reaction to the flick. For every 50 or so people who were quietly invested in the story of the noble father trying to save his son, there were at least two--consistently Black males--who booed or cursed at the very concept of the snitch being a hero. Suffice to say, Snitch will probably do gangbusters in middle to upper class areas, but it'll struggle to gain ground with "urban" audiences after opening week. But opening week is all that matters anyway, right?

What may matter more is the notion that has spread among young boys like the noisy bama in front of me and others like him. The ones who think being tight-lipped guarantees them loyalty from hustlers, bangers, and kingpins. That it will make them any less of a disposable resource to these underground corporations that dump bodies instead of pink slips. That it might give them a leg up in climbing the ladder to nowhere, which is so much more preferable than climbing that same ladder with a pension and health insurance plan attached. Snitching may not be the "noblest" way to conduct oneself in the "streets", but what makes kids like  the mouthy mofo in front me think the "streets" are going to treat them any better if they keep quiet is nothing more than blindness, a blindness that was put on front street most recently in Scorcese's The Departed.

Like Snitch, we are only at our best in these situations when we accept that undeniable law of nature: we are a disposable resource. However, as disposable as we may be to other people and forces beyond our control, we still achieve more when we work and fight for ourselves. It's only when Rocky realizes that fact, that neither side cares and he will have to create his own solution, that he truly becomes a relatable, admirable hero. It's not rocket science. But, kids like the one in front of me aren't rocket scientists. They hold onto to the very same institutions that multiple narratives, fictional and non-fictional, have revealed to be callous and uncaring. And they'll continue to hold onto them until they've been locked up because the dude they didn't snitch on snitches on them.

Warm Bodies: A Near-perfect Twilight or Why R is Better than Edward

"I am nothing like that guy. Seriously, look at these cheekbones."

Dear Stephanie Meyer,

Re: Warm Bodies

This.

Sincerely,
Fans of Supernatural Love Stories and Everybody Else

I knew it wouldn't take long for somebody to really get out there and make a better Twilight. Heck, the only place to go from Twilight was up, so there was pretty low ceiling for failure. Yet, Jonathan Levine's adaptation of Isaac Marion's zombie love story, Warm Bodies, is such a tight and alarmingly heartwarming narrative that it makes you wonder how Twilight made it to bookstores and the silver screen first, despite the very clear and reasonable evidence that without Twilight there would be no Warm Bodies. With that in mind, we almost have to thank Stephanie Meyer for screwing the pooch so royally that dozens of others were inspired to clean up her mess. And what a masterful job Levine did in adapting one of the best attempts to clean up the Twilight mess.

Warm Bodies is a simple, yet reasonably original, love story that acknowledges and comments some of literature and pop cultures best inter-species love stories from the most obvious, Romeo & Juliet, to the contemporary, Twilight of course, and everything in between, including Edward Scissorhands and Beauty and The Beast. At the center of Bodies is R (Nicholas Hoult), a teen, or maybe twenty-something, zombie who spends his days stumbling through an abandoned airport in the aftermath of an ill-defined, possibly supernatural, zombie apocalypse and barely making small talk with his one "friend", M (Rob Corddry). On a "routine" hunt for food (read: brains), R encounters a band of humans from one of the last surviving human settlements and is immediately infatuated with Julie (Teresa Palmer), who just so happens the daughter of fanatical human resistance leader (John Malkovich). After consuming the brain of Julie's boyfriend (Dave Franco), R "kidnaps" Julie, for her safety, taking her to the grounded plane he calls home, where he finds himself becoming more human as he gets closer to her. Admittedly, the setup is pretty rote,  what with all the star-crossed lovers from opposite sides of the track, but what makes Warm Bodies work is that this setup launches a very charming, tight narrative devoted to building a solid relationship between R and Julie rather than putting their relationship through the typical contrived Rom-Com paces.

In many ways, Warm Bodies is reminiscent of the best parts of The Artist: the charming characters (R moreso than Julie, easily), avoidance of rom-com tropes, and the focus on building a relationship rather than pasting it together. There's a moment near the midpoint, where R, who speaks through either internal monologue or barely understandable grunts, admits a pretty damning secret to Julie, and it is handled without melodrama or histrionics but a level of maturity and intelligence that is often lacking in both genre flicks and rom-coms. That moment is one of many, including a witty yet subdued Beauty-and-the-Beast scenario, that sold me on Levine's  minimally schmaltzy take on the material. Beyond Levine's admirably restrained approach, Nicholas Hoult's portrayal of R is quite special because he imbues R with a reticent, almost reluctant charm. His R is that stock character who only wants a "normal" life, but he also acknowledges that his reality is not always pretty. He is essentially Peter Parker as a zombie, right down to the Red-Blue outfit. Yet, once he is exposed to the potential to become more human, R doggedly pursues his love and life without resorting to an abundance of moping or machismo. R is a great romantic lead because he is honest, earnest, and fallible, which makes him charming in a way that his closest contemporary, Edward Cullen, will never be.

Hoult's performance is critical to the relatively slow-burn nature of the flick, which is admittedly well-paced. With Warm Bodies, Levine does not rush the proceedings and instead lets the relationship between R and Julie grow slowly, giving the two a chance to develop trust beyond R's initial infatuation and allowing that trust to blossom into a relationship based on an oft-ignored concept called honesty. This approach also allows Levine to guide the movie beyond a simple romance, which is welcome because Warm Bodies really isn't about romance. It is a fable about the resilience of humanity in the face of its own inhumanity. Bodies may not be the most heady examination of that topic but at least it's ambitious enough to attempt to discuss such a weighty topic. As R's love for Julie blossoms over the course of the film, his physical body comes to reflect the struggle plaguing him since being turned. Essentially, it reveals a soul who, despite a very unique condition, struggles to hold onto the things that make him human. Even the character most likely voted as antagonist, Malcovich's cold Geneal Grigio, is a man struggling to hold on to humanity, in both a personal and explicitly broad sense, after losing his family in the wake of the Zombocalypse. Again, this flick touches on heavier issues than something like Twilight ever will, but it does so with a less-than-cynical outlook, which makes it altogether far more endearing than its contemporaries.

Yet, for all its bright spots, Warm Bodies is quite an acquired taste. It is can be intermittently uneventful, follows a pretty worn path, and the ending essentially requires us to believe in magic, which may alienate those already put off by the exhausted supernatural romance angle. Also, Hoult's R is far more likable and relatable than Palmer's more stoic and underserved Julie, leading Bodies into a space that Twilight always occupied where the female lead is far more stoic and less appealing than her suitors. This is particularly damaging because movies such as this need both leads to be equally appealing. Finally, there's some insightful commentary on zombie tropes that is occasionally chuckle-worthy, but most of it is no more insightful--yet still fairly clever--than most intelligent zombie fare. Still, Warm Bodies is not completely undone by its faults. The amount of heart on display is unmatched by most zombie narratives, and the optimism at the core of the movie is refreshing in an era where narratives about the supernatural seem more interested in remarking more on our capacity to destroy than our ability to build and persevere. Even more welcome, is the flicks attempt to show that love can blossom when both parties involved are honest and reasonably mature rather than the celibacy slavery that Meyer champions in her Twilight saga.

Gangster Squad: Turning the Untouchables into a Saturday Morning Cartoon

"Watch out for that new Power Ranger franchise: Power Rangers - Untouchable Gangster Squad!!"

Twenty years ago, Gangster Squad would have changed my life. I would have been a fresh teen, sneaking into a cool R-rated actioner filled with quick-witted aces, duplicitous dames, and brutal bad guys that looked and sounded just like most of the heavies from the first season of Batman the Animated Series.

Of course, that would have only happened if I never saw the Untouchables, Devil in a Blue Dress, or LA Confidential. But, at ripening old age, I have seen all of these movies, as well as countless other flicks, shows, and video games, some successful (Boardwalk Empire) and some less so (The Black Dhalia and Rockstar's L.A. Noire), which have covered this ground with greater craft and concern for verisimilitude, character, and narrative than Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad.

Mind you, I enjoy Fleischer's work. Zombieland was pretty solid for its relatively modest ambitions, and 30 Seconds or Less is a decent, if slight, diversion. However, Fleischer is purely a populist filmmaker who likely has his sights set on becoming the next Zack Snyder or Michael Bay, and he will probably be sliding into a cushy position as a middle-of-the-road journeyman whose works will inevitably display more bombast than vision. Granted, that's a bold prediction, but I offer Gangster Squad as proof. At its best, Gangster Squad is a rip-roaring good time in the vein of old school gangster B-movies, like Angels with Dirty Faces, where morality is black and white and characters are flat as paper but bullets fly as fast as the quips. At its worse, the flick is a living cartoon with simplistically insulting morality, almost zero cleverness or narrative depth (despite rich source material), and a cast of characters that seems handpicked by the Saturday Morning Cartoon Commission on Diversity.

I want to start with the characters in Gangster Squad because as a viewer with a personal awareness that a multicultural vigilante unit in 1940's LA is a deceptively pleasant fiction, that element sticks out like the sorest thumb imaginable. Despite Fleischer and crew's best efforts at reaching a broad audience and respecting global cultural diversity, there is literally no way an African-American or a Hispanic-American would have occupied a place on an elite vigilante unit in pre-Civil rights era Los Angeles, no matter how progressive California was and continues to be. As a Black man, I admit it's cool to see Anthony Mackie playing knife-slinging, smart ass cowboy/ninja/cop Coleman Harris, but I know it's BS, the special brand designed to entice the 18-35 black male demo to come out and see a movie they would have seen with or without an African-American character. Even worse, Fleischer makes only a cursory acknowledgement of the fact that Harris' presence on the squad is inherently odd. To further diminish suspension of disbelief, he adds a Mexican-American character, the colorfully named Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena, woefully underused), who is essentially a "My Man Friday" to Robert Patrick's rootin-tootin' Yosemite Sam, Max Kennard. That said, the white boys don't fare much better, as Josh Brolin is saddled with every Irish cop stereotype in the book with the exception of red hair, as hard-fightin' and hard-drinkin' John  O'Meara. Only Giovanni Ribisi, as surveillance geek with a conscience, and Ryan Gosling narrowly escape such egregious one-dimensionality, most likely because the romantic lead has to have some semblance of depth, even if that depth only reaches into the reservoirs of Gosling's previous turns as a tiny-voiced charmer. 

Aside from its Rainbow Heroes Collective, Gangster Squad boasts a narrative with little to say and even less on its mind. Not every piece of work that graces the silver screen has to be art; we all know that, but even the pure popcorn entertainment should endeavor to be mildly clever in its progression and respectably honest  about its setting. The vigilantes and villains at the center of Gangster Squad are easily the dullest knives in the drawer, bar none. O'Meara and his squad plan to go to war with East Coast mobster Mickey Cohen, but they have only the barest of bare bones plans: take'em down head on. How about planning an attack? How about wearing masks (which only happens once and never again, leading to friends and families being put in avoidable danger)? How about killing your enemies before they kill your families? How about scouting your enemy then planning an attack where you wear masks and kill those who might kill your family? None of these options are viable; instead, the squad opts to bug Mickey Cohen's home and proceed to bulldoze through a gang war like stickup kids.Cohen, for his part, isn't much smarter, spending more time cackling and grimacing like he was auditioning for a role as one of Gotham's lesser known Batman punching bags than devising fool-proof plans to build a low-key criminal empire--his big plan is to force all West Coast gambling through a central location, because that would never catch the authorities attention. Though Penn probably enjoyed gnashing on scenery in a manner that could only rival the chomping DeNiro displayed in DePalma's The Untouchables (yes, those guys, again). 

To make matters worse, countless works of fiction and non-fiction have gone to great lengths to reveal early 20th century Los Angeles as a complex beast, one that was as affected by racial strife, drugs, crime, and police corruption as it was by the ever growing movie industry. Very little of that complexity, much less the adherent gray morality associated with such a murky period, is acknowledged on camera. If Gangster Squad was the first of its kind, it's black-white morality, in which good cops are unflinching paragons of virtue and gangsters and corrupt cops are the slime that oozes between the sidewalks, might be refreshing, even optimistic, but it exists in the shadow of more than a dozen, or more films that have dealt with the period and its complexities with greater depth, honesty, and entertainment value. Heck, one only needs to look at LA Confidential or the classic Chinatown as evidence.

So, how does Fleischer and his crew counter this lunk-headed approach to narrative and theme? With guns-a-blazing, slow-mo, nacho cheesy dialogue, and a saturated palette that makes the setting as much a cartoon as its characters. For all its faults, Gangster Squad is pretty consistent with the shoot-outs and the stabbings and the beatings. There is such quick movement from set piece to set piece, often with only the barest of rationalization, that one could ignore the lesser elements and just have a whizz-bang good time watching O'Meara and co. gun down the bad guys like the video game characters they are. For most audiences, that will be enough. For anyone with cable or over the age of 13, the proceedings of Gangster Squad will seem flashy but highly derivative. To wit, those multiple set pieces lack any sense of tension beyond the moments that encourage the audience to take bets on which character will die the tragic death that will spur our heroes to cross the line in their pursuit of the pugnacious Cohen. 

Ultimately, Gangster Squad is just the type of throwback action flick that belongs in the January doldrums, that rarefied space where we get a ton of action movies that would have easily been banished to Netflix if not for the generally empty slate studios offer in the early months of the year. Of course, it was originally scheduled for release in November, as some whispered about potential Oscar nods that would never surface, but was pushed back for reshoots after the Dark Knight Tragedy in Aurora, CO last July. As bad as it may have seemed at the time, that move was probably a blessing in disguise because now Gangster Squad seems like it might have a shot at dominating the box office without the threat of real competition,  aside from Marlon Wayans' A Haunted House--which will surely sneak up on the Squad and probably crush them. Instead of being demolished, Gangster Squad will have a clear lane to taking its place as a decidedly guilty pleasure for teenagers who have never been allowed to see a gangster flick of worth, so good job Gangster Squad cast and crew, you only had to leave your original release behind and your brains at the door to take your place in the hearts and minds of the unenlightened youth. Congrats.