South Park, "Gluten Free Ebola"

Ah, it’s been a while since the people of South Park have been in a full-blown panic. When there’s a story about something that could harm us, you can count on the little mountain town losing its collective crap. It always makes for some free laughs (at least from me), and more than that: every time the news ominously strokes our fears about the latest threat, the ridiculousness of the townspeople’s rabid hysteria cuts the tension and lets us know we shouldn’t all freak out. And that reassurance couldn’t have come at a better time than now.

This time, the threat sending the town into a frenzy is a potential health crisis. No, not that one (though the episode clearly has its allegorical eye on it, spelling it out in the title for those who can’t catch the connection otherwise). The culprit causing all the panic is gluten. In one of their patented reversals, the show appears to be ripping on the latest food trend (going gluten-free) and its adherents who take every opportunity to tell people about it. But low and behold, the little wheat compound causes some hilarious maladies.

The episode doesn’t go as far with its concept as it could have, and doesn’t make much of a point about gluten-free dieting or disease scares, other than that panicking is a bad idea. But then, that seems to be by design. The final revelation about the now-retired food pyramid (anyone else remember that?) seems to distinctly not make a point besides saying "Screw you!" to fad diets, while reminding those looking to dissect the episode for a bigger message that it’s just a cartoon.

The solution worked well and was funny. Many other parts—the vulgarly macabre gluten deaths, the aforementioned panic scenes with dim-witted everyman Randy front and center, Cartman’s supremely weird dream about pyramids and Aunt Jemima—were, too. The B storyline—a conclusion to last week’s plot in which the four main boys try to get Lorde to perform at a party to win back their friends—was a disappointment, however. After building the point up the whole episode by referring to but never actually showing the singer, they could have at least provided an amusing celebrity parody instead of just more Randy.

South Park, "Go Fund Yourself"

South Park made headlines by trolling the Washington Redskins and the team’s owner Dan Snyder during their actual game this past weekend. It was an effective way to grab peoples’ attention and let everyone know the show hasn’t lost any bite, but unfortunately, the season premiere it was advertising didn’t live up to the promise.

On the show, the boys of South Park are seeking a name for their startup company and decide on “Washington Redskins,” which in their world as well as ours they are legally allowed to do. Not stopping there, the episode prominently displays (and vulgarly defaces) the team’s official logo, as if Trey Parker and Matt Stone are just daring Snyder to try and sue them. While the show’s version of Snyder and his team are painted as the marginalized “proud people” whose name is being misused, the rebuttal from Cartman sounds quite similar to the real Snyder’s reasoning for not changing the team name despite the recent pressure to do so.

It seems to try to address the issue the way “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” addressed racism, but the results are not nearly as sharp. Clearly, the episode is more interested in trolling the NFL. Which they do, to ends other than the Washington name controversy, from the empty and ineffectual rhetoric of Roger Goodell lately, to a few little digs at Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. The more concise and direct commentary is on crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter (which judging by the episode, Stone and Parker think are a waste of money), but it’s such a small part of the plot and plays second fiddle to the NFL stuff (plus, is that really an issue people care even a little about?).

Sadly, all the gags were only about as funny as about a million memes sports fans post online to make fun of opposing teams and players. I laughed at some of them, but it’s a little disappointing to sit for a whole half-hour episode and only get stuff similar to the junk on your Twitter feed. Even more so when the subject had so much potential for satire, and yet this was all they settled for.

Gotham, "Pilot"

DC is very publicly trying to imitate the onscreen successes of their longtime foe Marvel. Their next movie is a pretty blatant attempt to launch a full film universe to rival that of their rival. Likewise, the company has expanded into primetime television after Marvel found success in the medium. But unlike Agents of Shield, which is connected directly to the Marvel films, Gotham is its own story, separate from the upcoming DC cinematic franchise (as far as we know). That might be a benefit, allowing it to go in its own directions instead of just supplementing the company’s bread and butter on the big screen.

Gotham’s pilot looks great and sets the right tone. There’s a vibe similar to The Dark Knight, with detailed, modern cityscapes and gritty, realistic incarnations of familiar characters. But this particular Gotham City has its own look, with the right combination of the traditional Victorian design of the comics and more real urban decay (David Fincher’s Seven came to mind, especially since it rains a lot on the show).

The pilot opens with one of the most well-known and defining moments of the DC canon: the robbery and murder of Thomas (Grayson McCouch) and Martha Wayne (Brette Taylor) in an alley, with their young son Bruce (David Mazouz) watching in horror. Assigned to the case are detectives Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), a straight-shooting new guy, and Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), a seasoned cop who knows how things really work in Gotham. As they investigate, Gordon as well as the audience come to see that there’s a conspiracy at work involving the police department as well as the city’s criminals.

Aside from a few cop show clichés (there’s one of those foot chases through urban corridors in which somehow neither cop nor criminal ever needs to take a breather), the pilot is quite good. Many supporting characters that could make for strong story arcs are put in place. Popular villains we expect are there, some upfront—a conniving young Oswald Cobblpot (Robin Lord Taylor) plays a big part, while a silent Selina Kyle (Carmen Bicondova) watches everything from the shadows—some in the background but still apparent. Also introduced are supporting characters that haven’t really had life outside the comics and cartoons, namely members of Gotham’s finest other than Gordon.

Logue is the first actor to play Harvey Bullock in the flesh, a prospect of the show that has high potential. In the comics, Bullock is something of an enigma: generally on the side of good, but never far from unspecified allegations of corruption. Logue’s portrayal, for now, errs more to the bad side, though more out of resigned acceptance of his own powerlessness than pure evil. The opportunity for personal conflict and character evolution is there, and Logue already has the character’s gruff, cynical deadpan down perfectly.

McKenzie brings the future commissioner's righteousness to his role, if not his strong voice of moral authority. In a series publicized as being Batman-less, he’s something of a question mark. Gordon’s had some strong personal moments over the years across different mediums, but the character is often defined by his relationship with Batman. In the pilot, young Bruce Wayne is far from putting on the cowl, but Gordon’s arc is focused on his obsessive drive (and later promise) to find the Waynes’ killer. I’m hoping all the Bruce Wayne stuff is gotten out of the way in the first episode and doesn’t hang over the whole series. We all know about Batman’s origin. As the pilot makes clear, there are plenty of other stories in Gotham City waiting to be told.

The Drop

Can a plot twist save a movie that up until that point isn’t very good? That’s the question I found myself asking after The Drop. Even if an ending makes the audience rethink what they just saw, does it make up for the fact that the rest of the picture leading up to it is rather boring and unengaging? Before I could decide on an answer, my mind had already moved on to other things, so I guess in this case it's a “no” by default.

The story follows Tom Hardy and the late James Gandolfini as, respectively, the bartender and the on-paper owner of a dive bar in a prototypical “old neighborhood” (the kind you have to wonder even exists in Brooklyn anymore). In reality, the bar is owned by Chechen gangsters and acts as a “drop bar” where they temporarily stash their dirty money. One night, the bar is robbed by two masked men, and the two are tasked to retrieve the money and find out who’s responsible.

What follows is a chain of events that make no secret of exactly where the plot is going. There’s no mystery or suspense. Instead, we’re mostly treated to tangential subplots that don’t seem to be going anywhere, or reminiscences about the characters’ better days gone by that we never see. Small punctuations of bloody violence do little to liven up the slogging, sleepy tone of the whole thing (even the initial stickup that puts the whole plot in motion holds no tension). The cast does little but mumble in mangled Brooklyn accents, as if they know this is an inconsequential film during the slow post-summer period and aren’t even trying. And all the gangster movie archetypes are beyond clichéd; somehow, this movie makes them seem even older, like relics from a past era of filmmaking.

Then comes the final revelation, where the picture shifts gears considerably. To be fair, it does add some depth to the characters, a kind of sad, cynical depth. At the very least, it shows that the rest of the film had a point. But as bad as it sounds, it botches it by offering a glimmer of hope. Not only does it dull the ending’s power, but it also sanitizes some pretty awful actions by the characters.

Then again, I’m not sure the picture would have been salvaged if they got the ending right. It’s too slight, too basic, and too insignificant. It’s not even exceptionally bad, just completely mediocre.

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!