The Host

The Host - Dir. Andrew Niccol (2013)

Whether you like it or not, author Stephenie Meyer created a worldwide phenomenon with her Twilight series. The books were adapted into a hugely successful film franchise as Twi-hards turned out in droves to watch Kristen Stewart choose between the hunky werewolf Jacob or the pale, sparkly vampire Edward. Meyer looked to catch lightning in a bottle once more with her follow-up novel The Host, which has been turned into a big-budget picture by Open Road Films and Universal.

The Host falls firmly into the realm of science fiction, but continues many of the themes Meyer tackled in Twilight, specifically teen romance and a female protagonist trying to find her place in a topsy-turvy world. The Host is basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers for tweens as the Earth is invaded by alien beings known as 'Souls.' The Souls quickly possess the majority of the human population with only a few scattered pockets of resistance. Among those still free is Melanie Stryder (Saoirse Ronan), whose father chose to kill himself rather than be taken. Melanie has survived on the run alongside her younger brother, Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and boyfriend Jared Howe (Max Irons, son of Jeremy Irons). Unfortunately, she is captured on a supply run by a Seeker (Diane Kruger) and implanted with a Soul known as Wanderer. Melanie's spirit remains strong and she resists Wanderer's attempts to access her memories to discover the whereabouts of other free humans.

Melanie and Wanderer enter into a reluctant symbiosis as they evade the Seeker and journey to Melanie's home in the Arizona desert. There, her Uncle Jeb (William Hurt) has transformed a vast cave system into a self-sustaining sanctuary. Jeb takes Wanderer in and nicknames her Wanda in spite of everyone's protests and firm belief that Melanie is dead. The plot thickens when Wanda develops feelings for the hunky Ian O'Shea (Jake Abel).

The crux of the story revolves around the odd love triangle in which two girls share one body. It’s a credit to the abilities of Saoirse Ronan (who was cast after producers saw her in Hanna) that she is able to argue with herself less silly. This is certainly a Herculean task given the hoary dialogue Ronan is forced to speak, such as "Kiss me like you want to get slapped." The tangled romance loses more credibility given that Melanie/Wanda's love interests are a couple of cardboard cutouts from an Abercrombie & Fitch display. The movie slowly atrophies once it focuses on the young and the beautiful as they moon for each other.

The Host doesn't get off to a bad start. Director Andrew Niccol, who also helmed Gattaca and In Time (along with the underrated Lord of War), knows how to handle slick sci-fi. Niccol sets the right atmosphere by immersing us into the sleek, utilitarian society of the Souls with their chrome sports cars and minimalist shops simply named "Store." However, once The Host settles into the desert caves, the story slows to a crawl as we are introduced to a number of uninteresting characters and their equally insipid relationships. On the positive side, Melanie is a stronger and more independent heroine than Twilight's passive and mopey Bella. Also, you can always count on actors like William Hurt, Frances Fisher, and Diane Kruger to bring some gravitas to even the most lackluster material.

If you're going to watch a movie titled The Host, skip this Stephenie Meyer adaptation and go for Bong Joon-ho's monster movie instead.

Rating: * (*****)

Robin Hood

Robin Hood - Dir. Ridley Scott (2010)


”Rise and rise again until lambs become lions.”

Was there a dire need for yet another Robin Hood film? There have been dozens and dozens of iterations about the famed archer on film and television. One of the most well-regarded versions is The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn in a light-hearted, Technicolor adventure film. The garish color palette of the 1938 picture is in stark contrast to Robin and Marian with Sean Connery as an aging, world weary Robin Hood returning to England and his love Marian (Audrey Hepburn in her first film after a 9 year absence) who has since become a nun. A grimier and grounded approach was taken with Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner as the blandest version of the title character. Despite Costner’s vanilla performance and sad attempt at a British accent, Prince of Thieves was buoyed by the mere presence of Morgan Freeman and a deliciously over-the-top Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Notthingham. You can also toss Disney’s animated Robin Hood and Mel Brooks’ parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights into the mix.

So where does Ridley Scott’s vision of Robin Hood stack up against the competition? Even with a $200 million budget, this Robin Hood sinks to the bottom of the barrel.

Russell Crowe teams with Ridley Scott for the fifth time. They originally paired up in the historical epic Gladiator and surprisingly followed that up with the romantic comedy, A Good Year. Their collaboration continued with the gritty crime film, American Gangster, and the spy thriller, Body of Lies. Robin Hood is closest in spirit to Gladiator and acts as a pseudo-companion piece to Scott’s Crusades picture, Kingdom of Heaven. This is a down and dirty rendition with nary a buckle swashed.

The film kicks off during the tail end of the 12th century with Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston) attempting to make his way back to England following the folly of the Third Crusade. King Richard is killed by an arrow through the neck while ransacking a French castle. Among the king’s army is a skilled bowman by the name of Robin Longstride (Crowe) who quickly deserts the battlefield with his friends Little John (Kevin Durand), Will Scarlet (Scott Grimes), and Alan A’Dayle (Alan Doyle). Meanwhile, Richard’s right hand man, Sir Robert of Loxley (Douglas Hodge) leads a small band of knights to return the king’s crown to England. They are ambushed by the evil Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong) who conspires with King Philip of France (Jonathan Zaccai) to weaken England with civil war.

Robin and his Merry Men (though they are never called as such) come across the aftermath. Donning the knight’s chain mail, Robin poses as Loxley upon his return to England. He arrives at Loxley’s estate where Robert’s father, Sir Walter (Max von Sydow), requests that he continue the masquerade much to the chagrin of Robert’s widow, the Lady Marian (Cate Blanchett). While Robin undertakes the charade, Godfrey brutally and relentlessly gathers taxes from the people under the orders of Richard’s brother, the petulant King John (Oscar Isaac), a near-copycat of Joaquin Phoenix’s Commodus.

The main cast also includes: William Hurt as the royal regent William Marshal, Mark Addy as Friar Tuck, and Matthew Macfadyen as an utterly inept Sheriff of Nottingham.

If that sounds like a lot to digest, it’s only the appetizer. There is a helluva lot more to come during the film’s daunting two and a half hour runtime. Robin Hood’s biggest strength lies in the spectacular production values. Scott and cinematographer John Mathieson (who also first collaborated on Gladiator) have created a gorgeous looking film that captures the majesty of the English landscape belonging to royalty and the squalidness of the world of the lower classes. CGI is effectively used to lend an added layer of authenticity. The acting isn’t particularly noteworthy, but the actors are fine in their roles. Honestly, the majority of them are capable of performing these parts in their sleep.

The weak link of the movie lies solely in the story. The screenplay was originally written by Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris who also wrote Kung Fu Panda and…ugh…Bulletproof Monk. Working under the title of Nottingham, the project was intended to portray Robin Hood as the villain while his arch-enemy, the Sheriff, would be shown in a more sympathetic light. Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) was brought on board to rewrite the script. Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare in Love) was hired later on to perform script polishing while on-set. The filmmakers settled on telling the origin story of a character who has no definitive origin story. Thus, Scott has stripped Robin Hood of nearly everything that makes him Robin Hood.

The names and places may be the same, but the romance between Robin and Marian is only just blossoming. Robin doesn’t live in Sherwood Forest yet and he only robs from the rich and gives to the poor once. The film does postulate an interesting premise in making Robin, who has always been portrayed as a nobleman, a humble peasant and conning his way into the higher classes. However, that subplot is dropped soon after. See, Robin never knew his real father, but Sir Walter conveniently knew Daddy Longstride and reveals all to him. Oh, and Robin’s father apparently came up with the Magna Carta.

Therein lays another weak point in the script, the uneven hodgepodge of historical fact and fiction. Real-life figures and events feel shoehorned into the legends and myths of Robin Hood. The movie maintains a self-serious tone which is completely undone during the climactic battle when the transport ships from Saving Private Ryan arrive. It only gets more ludicrous when Marian arrives in battle armor with an army of wild boys who look like they wandered off the set of Lord of the Flies.

Imagine going to see Batman Begins only to discover Bruce Wayne doesn’t don the Bat-costume until the final minute of the film. Robin Hood makes us sit through a 140 minute prologue that ends at the exact moment when it should have begun.

Rating: * ½

The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk - Dir. Louis Leterrier (2008)


The Incredible Hulk doesn’t hit it right out of the park as Iron Man did, but it’s a respectable triple. Whereas Ang Lee’s Hulk was more talky, less smashy, this new Hulk is more smashy, less talky. Ed Norton pulls double-duty for this latest adaptation of the Green Goliath. He’s pitch-perfect as Bruce Banner and, though he got hosed on a writing credit, his rewrite of Zak Penn's script is an excellent melding of action and drama, which utilizes elements from the classic TV series, Bruce Jones’ seminal run of the comic and the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale miniseries, Hulk: Gray.

It’s a shame so much of the meat was plucked off the story's bones. It feels as if Marvel was a little too trigger happy in the editing room due to the backlash of the previous Hulk. Much has been made of the row between Norton and Marvel Studios over the final cut of the film. About twenty minutes of footage was trimmed from the movie in order to maintain a faster paced and more commercial cut at less than two hours. Scenes from the trailers such as Bruce’s one-on-one with Doc Samson and his trek to the Arctic (where we were supposedly to catch a glimpse of Captain America) are gone. You can definitely feel that there was something missing in the film, especially considering how thinly written characters like Blonsky and Betty Ross were written. Samson is relegated to little more than a cameo.

The Incredible Hulk certainly lacks the visual punch that Ang Lee brought to the previous film. The Hulk’s encounter with the army on campus doesn’t match up to the widescreen action of the Lee Hulk’s battle in the desert. The final fight between Hulk and Abomination isn’t too bad considering we're just watching two CGI cartoon characters punching each other.

I should stop picking apart the film as this was a damn, good time. As I said, Norton is fantastic in the lead role. He might not look as good in the part as Sam Elliot, but William Hurt equates himself well as Thunderbolt Ross, Marvel’s answer to Captain Ahab. Tim Roth is another great actor, but he doesn’t have much to do as Blonsky. There’s also just the right amount of humor sprinkled into the film. Liv Tyler isn’t the most nuanced actress around, but she’s best during those lighter moments, especially her scenes in New York City. Tim Blake Nelson probably puts in the most fun performance of anyone in the cast as Dr. Samuel Sterns. As any comic book fan worth his salt knows, he’ll return to plague the Hulk’s life as the cranially-enhanced supervillain, The Leader.

And that’s another element diehard fans will get a kick out of. The film packs in numerous Easter eggs and cameos (including a certain man of iron) for the geeks to squeal over. I spotted about 5 of them just in the opening credits. Stan Lee makes his obligatory appearance, but one that actually plays an integral part in the story. Lou Ferrigno is there and they even found a way to work the late-Bill Bixby into the movie.

If we could have just gotten Ang Lee to direct THIS version of the Hulk, that would have been a kickass comic book film. The Incredible Hulk doesn't have the innovative visual style of its predecessor, but it is a more faithful adaptation. Hulk isn't just a worthy follow-up to Iron Man, but it also continues to build the foundation for a shared Marvel universe to be brought to life on the big screen. It acknowledges the past while giving us a taste of the future where we'll find a star-spangled super-soldier and the phrase, "Avengers assemble!" becomes a distinct possibility. Let's just hope the behind-the-scenes tiffs aren't enough to drive Ed Norton away. I can't imagine a Hulk sequel or an Avengers pic without him as Bruce Banner.

Rating: *** ½

Vantage Point

Vantage Point - Dir. Pete Travis (2008)

Rashomon if it had been remade by a Michael Bay knockoff (McG, Simon West, I'm looking at you).

Cliched, derivative script full of stock characters tricked out by a gimmicky premise to fool you into believing you were watching something substantial.