Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The new reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles might actually be worse than the Transformers movies. I’m not sure if it’s any worse on a filmmaking level (I’m not going to waste time examining the particulars of two awful films), but what the movie does to the legacy of the Turtles is much more painful. The myriad Transformers animated series were not very good, basically half-hour commercials for the toy line. Ninja Turtles was likewise a merchandizing cash cow, but it wasn’t just a blatant ploy to sell stuff to kids. The franchise actually began as a clever and popular comic book, and the media it spawned—cartoons, movies, highly acclaimed video games—had a certain fun quality for kids and adults. So it hurts more to see the series get the Michael Bay (mis)treatment.

Bay is only a producer here (with Jonathan Liebesman sitting in the director’s chair), but the movie’s still got all his trademarks: image oversaturation in every shot, incomprehensible CGI-packed action, headache-inducing rapid cuts and shaky cam, and, like Transformers, awful-looking digital characters. Yes, the Turtles up-close are as ugly as the Internet has complained, while their mentoring rat Splinter (voiced by Tony Shalhoub) looks like he was lifted from a 3D cartoon. This seems like a moot point to complain about, however, because even the characters who are real flesh and blood just become blurs in the muddled computerized mayhem of the action scenes, of which there are many.

Surprisingly, though, that’s not the worst thing. That would be the fact that for a while, the Turtles are barely in the movie, and the main character arc is not theirs. Instead, much of the time and story follows their reporter ally April O’Neil (Megan Fox), whose backstory gets retooled to give her a bigger part in their origin. This prevents the film from working as a dumb, turn-off-your-brain special effects movie, as the story portions are very boring and inane. Fox, at least, is no longer just a skimpily dressed object to leer at like in Transformers (in fact, the movie even lampoons this in one scene), but she is still not a very good actress.

This isn’t the only way the plot gets outsourced to the human characters. In spite of everything, the Turtles start to develop some humorous charm as characters in the second half. But, they have to compete with O’Neil’s cameraman (Will Arnett) for comic relief. Even worse, the classic villain Shredder (Tohoru Masamune) only exists as a digital effect to participate in fights scenes. Instead, the main bad guy as far as the plot goes is William Fichtner, playing one of the most generic supervillains ever. The result is that the main narrative conflict seems completely detached from the fighting, which drains any sort of dramatic depth or excitement from either. It’s like watching the story and exposition scenes of one movie and cutting in the action scenes from a completely different one.

There’s a few fleeting references to the franchise’s past that old fans will probably notice, but even these reek of pandering and insincerity. If they really respected the series and its fans, the filmmakers could have made a picture that honors its legacy while creatively reimagining it, rather than merely paying a little lip service while turning out such a noisy, ugly, stupid film. Even though the franchise has seen some very low points, none of them are as completely unappealing as this.

A Most Wanted Man

What made the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman such a skilled actor is the fact that his roles weren’t so much performances as portraits of human behavior. Think about it: there really isn’t a single defining scene or one specific monologue that stands out in even his best roles. That’s because he always mastered the little things about his characters: their habits and behaviors, their subtle quirks, the way they interact with people. An actor might normally convince the audience through dynamic action and delivery. Hoffman could simply occupy the scene in character, and there was never a shred of disbelief (and he could often take over a scene even if he shared it with a much broader performer).

His approach made his characters seem like real people instead of fictional creations, much easier to believe and more compelling to follow through a narrative. Such made him the perfect fit for the protagonist of A Most Wanted Man, which is less a thriller than a portrait of 21^st Century espionage.

The man of the title refers to a Chechen refugee seeking asylum in Hamburg (Grigoriy Dobrygin), who also happens to be the heir to a fortune. A fortune which, veteran German intelligence agent Günther Bachmann (Hoffman) thinks, might be attractive to jihadist financers. Unbeknownst to the sickly immigrant, Bachmann seeks to use him as bait to trap an alleged terrorist supplier, which means gaining the cooperation of a banker (Willem Dafoe) and a civil rights lawyer (Rachel McAdams), as well as German higher-ups and an American agent (Robin Wright) who prefer to deal with things less delicately.

The film has the expected authenticity of being based on a novel by literary spy master John le Carré. There are no explosions or shootouts, or even scenes that start pumping viewers’ adrenaline. In fact, there’s not even really a mystery to the plot. It’s instead the mundane side of the spy game, the unglamorous grunt work of it. But it’s an arresting look at how agencies operate. And having Hoffman be our guide through the tangled process makes it seem realer, not some disconnected piece of entertainment like Bourne or Bond.

Everyone else is solid in this film (lackluster accents from the non-German cast aside), but it’s Hoffman’s show without a doubt. Driven but understated, he gives us a man to whom the regular nature of spying—gathering intelligence discreetly, convincing (manipulating) citizens to become allies—is simply routine. It’s his job, and while he still does it well (masterfully, actually, as convincing as the real thing), to him it’s almost monotonous. But while his sentiment is gone, he at least maintains some sort of morality. He tries to earn trust and keep his word when he can…only for the picture to remind us just how hard that can be amidst agent egos and agency pressure and bureaucracy.

It is a little melancholy knowing that you’re watching one of Hoffman’s last performances. But it’s more respectful to him, I think, to judge the work on its merits alone, not because it happened to turn out this way. Besides, with his talent, the man didn’t need such pity, and neither does the movie.

Guardians of the Galaxy

This is, without a doubt, the most slapdash and ridiculous film yet in the Marvel film catalog. And it knows it. But being in on the joke and playing along is not enough to give it a pass. I realize I recently recommended another movie for being knowingly ridiculous while I’m criticizing this one for the exact same reason. Maybe it’s because that one was completely a comedy, while this still takes some of its parts seriously. Perhaps Guardians of the Galaxy should have likewise gone all out. On second thought, I have no idea how it could have been any more ridiculous, but I do know it probably wouldn’t have been a good thing.

I’ll probably lose some nerd cred for this, but I have no idea what exactly is happening onscreen. You might think this is because these heroes and their antagonists aren’t as big of household names as Marvel characters like Iron Man or Captain America, but that’s not all of it. Every other Marvel film made time to properly introduce its characters and familiarize viewers with their origin stories. In other words, they took into account the fact that people who weren’t familiar with the comics might be in the audience.

Not this one. In this case, the audience is dropped right into a complicated conflict and just left to try to figure it out on their own. All that is clear is that a ragtag group of heroes—human space pirate Peter “Star-Lord” Quill (Chris Pratt), green-skinned Gamora (Zoe Saldana), vengeful alien Drax the Destroyer (Dave Bautista), mouthy, gun-slinging raccoon Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), and walking, talking tree Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel)—are searching for a mystical orb that is wanted by treasure hunters, collectors, and parties from both sides in a galactic war. To anyone who isn’t familiar with the comics, all the new planets and character names come off as just gibberish. It feels like a low-rent Star Wars knockoff painted over with brighter colors.

There’s eye candy galore in the film. But going with that metaphor, what happens when you eat too much candy? Well, the equivalent effect happens watching the film, nearly resulting in sensory overload (the picture isn’t nearly as bad as the legendarily awful Batman & Robin, but its garish colors make that movie look like a muted, understated spectacle). It doesn’t help that it seems like it was shot with 3D in mind, as there are several layers to many shots that look like they’re meant to pop off the screen at different levels. Declining the few extra bucks for a pair of glasses means all the imagery is smushed into one layer that’s too busy for the eye to take it all in. This happens quite a bit, and hampers a lot of the action, some of which is otherwise well done and imaginative.

And yet, in spite of all this, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh. The heroes, as well as a few supporting players, are all very funny. Especially well cast are Pratt as the whip-smart sarcastic lead and Bautista as the straight man who’s so serious that he hilariously lacks all tact. The arguing among the characters brought some loud and frequent fits of laughter, so much that it drowned out nearly half the dialogue in a few scenes.

The characters almost save the picture. Maybe it’s even worth seeing just for them. But the movie around them is still pretty dumb and convoluted, both in narrative and aesthetic. Plus, the soundtrack of dated 70s and 80s pop gets annoying. Seriously, pop culture, those decades are long gone! Get over it!