..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

..Wilmington on DVD ..MCN Weekend

Terminator Salvation, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Dance Flick, Easy Virtue
_________________________________

Terminator Salvation (Two Stars)
U. S.; McG   

It‘s back. In a way.
   
Terminator Salvation -- a big, roaring, burn-down-the-planet sequel to the Terminator trilogy set in the future -- tries to be a super-apocalyptic nightmare, a cine-techno-bloodbath where man battles machine, cyborg battles mini-copter, robot battles android, rebels battles mechano-tyrant, bombshell commando battles robo-snake, guerillas battle the future, CG whizzes battle scriptwriters, and everything possible gets blown to hell.
   
For two frantic, futuristic hours, all these combatants rage through a poisonous-looking landscape of fancy, dusty waste and devastation, where the worst fears of Global Warning prophets seem to have combined with the direst fantasies of cyber-haters and survivalists to create a Road Warrior-gone-mad landscape that not even poor little Wall-E could enliven.
     
In the original Terminator, one of the great sci-fi horror movies of the ‘80s, Arnold Schwarzenegger played a cyborg from the future, whose mission was to find and kill the boy (Edward Furlong) who will grow up to be John Connor, the legendary Resistance leader who will lead humanity to triumph over the triumphant, tyrannical machines of Skynet, set to unleash waves of cyber and robo-horror on Judgment Day, 2004 (the year of Bush‘s second inauguration).
     
In this movie, Connor (Christian Bale) has grown to adulthood, the planet is a bloody mess (it looks, in fact, as if Bush and Cheney had never left office), and Connor and bellicose human military leader General Ashdown (Michael Ironside) -- who acts as if his idol/role model were Generals Jack D. Ripper and Buck Turgidson of Dr. Strangelove --  are set to attack the machines. (Ashdown isn’t shy about killing  human hostages and prisoners as well). Another cyborg and T800, using the brain and body of  executed murderer Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) is in the mix, hunting through the blighted landscape, for ... can we be sure what his prey really is?
     
Gov. Schwarzenegger, star and villain-turned-hero mainstay of the first three Terminator movies, isn’t around here. But somebody somehow has whipped up an Arnie cameo-clone, and the California guy’s hero-or-villain shoes are otherwise filled by both Bale  as the human Resistance messiah  Connor and Australian actor Sam Worthington as super-robo-commando Marcus. (Worthington, who won an Australian Film Institute best actor prize for Somersault, may win stardom here too, for a role that could have been halfway intended for, or inspired by, Schwarzenegger.) Somebody is also clearly thinking of even more sequels down the pike here, perhaps stretching all the way to 2018, when this movie is supposed to be taking place. But though it’s well enough done in its ultra-video game-ish way, I found no cause for Hallelujahs in this Salvation.
     
Terminator Sal is exciting, but I wouldn’t exactly call it a good time. Directed by the razzly-dazzly video-maker McG of Charlie’s Angels movie ill-fame, and written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, the team who gave us Terminator 3 and David Fincher‘s The Game, but who also committed Catwoman, it’s dark and horrific-looking, set in a wasteland full of blood, carnage and bizarre gadgetry, and done with all the virtuosic ugliness that modern movie technology can muster. (Robot master Stan Winston, who designed the first Schwarzenegger T800 robot, gets a last hurrah in the credits.)
             
Ever since 1984, when Schwarzenegger’s first Terminator first popped up in L. A., growling “I’ll be back,”  and menacing mom Linda Hamilton and the young Connor (Edward Furlong), a battle involving time travel conspiracies has been going on: as the villain masterminds of the all-embracing Skynet try to change the future by altering the past.  Connor, as we’ve been told forever, is destiny‘s child, the fated heroic leader of the Resistance, whom Skynet wants off the map as badly as Fox News and its myrmidons want to end the career of President Obama. (Their new motto seems to be “We Destroy; You Decide”)
       
Here we see not only the grown-up John (Bale), but -- courtesy of the convolutions and paradoxes of time travel -- we meet his father-as-a-kid, Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), and hear his mom-as-a-recording (Hamilton).  Also around for the wild ride -- as Marcus aids Connor by going after Kyle and then gets caught up in the climactic robo-showdown -- is ultra-tot Star (played by Jadagrace), mysterious cancer victim Dr. Serena Kogan (played, in a waste of her time, by Helena Bonham Carter) and rough-and-tough model commando Blair (played by the aptly named new action-heroine Moon Bloodgood). Along the way, various people or robots find their humanity, though I’ve got to admit, I never saw any.
     
Schwarzenegger became a superstar in the 1984 Terminator and there’s an irony in the fact that his star-making part was as a killer robot lost in the past. Cameron put a wry, dark comedy edge into The Terminator -- and Schwarzenegger also had it in his performance. But that fun has been much less evident ever since they made the dubious decision to turn A. S.’s T800 from pure villain to pure hero in T2. This movie is about as funny and enjoyable as a massacre in a sandstorm. Or as a perpetual Charlie’s Angels movie marathon, programmed during a polar cap meltdown.
       
To tell the truth, after a while watching Terminator Salvation, I couldn’t wait for it to be over -- and I’m a strong partisan of the original Terminator and of other movies  alluded to here, like The Road Warrior, and The Great Escape. Yet Terminator Salvation is probably the kind of movie that the modern American  studio system is geared and programmed to make these days, and that’s not a very consoling thought. Why couldn‘t they be geared up to make modern equivalents of Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain, The Godfather, North by Northwest, On the Waterfront, Stagecoach, or Some Like It Hot? (Except for Citizen Kane, those were all very popular movies.) Why are we stuck in the middle of this desert apocalypse bash-o-thon waiting for John Connor or somebody to ascend to messiah-hood? Maybe the machines have won.

_____________________________________________________


Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (Two-and-a-Half Stars)
U S.; Shawn Levy
   
Not content with running amok and bringing to life the exhibits in New York City‘s Museum of Natural History, in the strange 2006 comedy hit, from Milan Trenc’s book,  Night at the Museum -- including Robin Williams as Teddy Roosevelt, Owen Wilson as cowpoke Jedediah, Steve Coogan as Roman hotshot Octavius, Rami Malek as felonious Pharaoh Akhmenrah and a rampaging dinosaur skeleton -- ex-night guard turned gadgeteer Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) is now on his way to Washington D. C.’s Smithsonian, where some of his old, beloved exhibits have been sent by nasty Dr. McPhee (an oddly unfunny Ricky Gervais), replaced by virtual “statues” that don’t have the pizzazz of the old bunch.
   
But surprises await in the nether regions of the Smithsonian. There’s the suddenly hyper-active Lincoln Memorial. There‘s nervous Gen. Custer (Bill Hader) who doesn’t want to make his last stand just yet. There are Napoleon, Al Capone and Ivan the Terrible (Alain Chabat, Jon Bernthal and Chris Guest) who have hooked up with Akhmenrah’s even eviler brother Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria), and are set to wreak all kinds of nocturnal museum-ish havoc.
     
There’s the beauteous, feisty Amelia Earhart, played by the beauteous, feisty Amy Adams, as adorable an aeronaut as ever wafted over the Pacific and disappeared. And there’s Jonah Hill as the Smithsonian’s night guard, doing a comedy routine with Stiller, which conclusively proves that you can’t have two wise guys in one comedy team, unless you’re The Marx Brothers. Anyway, Ben is no Groucho and Jonah is no Chico. And there’s not a Harpo or a Zeppo in sight, unless Williams or Wilson want the jobs.
   
For my taste, there just weren’t enough laughs in this comedy. But it sure looks good. Especially when Adams is on screen.

_____________________________________________________



Dance Flick (One-and-a-Half Stars)
U. S.; Damien Dante Wayans
   
Spearheaded by debuting feature director-co-writer Damien Dante Wayans, the Wayans  family gets together to make fun of dance movies. But their targets are not the classics of Fred Astaire, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly (unless you count one cloudburst scene). Instead they‘re spoofing more modern musical movies like Fame, Save the Last Dance and Dirty Dancing -- which however had its parody cut for being too dirty.
     
It’s quite a Wayans clan wingding anyway. Damien is the son of Nadia Wayans, who had a bar bit in I’m Gonna Git You, Sucka. And assisting him here as co-writers are his uncles, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Shawn, Marlon, and Craig Wayans, who’s Keenen Ivory‘s cousin. The producers are Keenen Ivory, Shawn, Marlon and Rick Alvarez. (No, that’s not Rick Alvarez Wayans, and I don’t know how he got in there.)
   
The cast of Dance Flick is headed by Shoshona Bush as the aspiring and sexy balletic orphan Megan White, Essence Atkins as Charity, her  bouncy best friend at The New York High School of Music and Art (or an approximation thereof), and Amy Sedaris as unconventional dance teacher Ms. Cameltoe, named for an embarrassingly protuberant part of her anatomy bulging visibly under her tights. (Boy, that Dirty Dancing bit must have been really dirty.)
     
The leading man, playing the politically-incorrectly monikered Thomas Uncles, is the familially correct Damon Wayans, Jr., son of Uncle Damon (The Last Boy Scout), whom I didn’t spot. But break-dancing their way through the rest of the cast are way more Wayanses: Aunt Kim as Ms. Dontwannabebothered, plus Uncles Shawn, Marlon and Keenen Ivory, cousins Michael and Cara Mia, and whatever relationship Craig is.
     
I’ve got to admit I didn’t laugh much at Dance Flick, though I laughed more than I did at Museum. But the Wayanses don’t need me. They know what’s funny, black or white. I’d sure love to go to one of their Thanksgiving dinners. By the way, there’s no truth to the rumor that the entire Wayans family appears in Night at the Museum 3: Hanging at The Louvre as Napoleon’s  army, with Uncle Marlon, in his Little Man outfit, as Napoleon.

_____________________________________________________



Easy Virtue (Two-and-a-Half Stars)
U. K.; Stephan Elliott
       
Noel Coward‘s '20s play, Easy Virtue,  is not new to movies. This country manor comedy of  good and bad manners,  about a sexy, free-spirited young newlywed,  subjected to snobbishness, idiocy and bigotry by her young hubby’s aristo family, and fighting back with a drizzle of wicked japes and bon mots, was, in fact, somewhat indifferently adapted in 1927 by the young Alfred Hitchcock. I‘ve seen Hitch’s version, and don’t remember much of it. But clearly, he wasn’t as much inspired by Coward’s brittle wit and psycho-sexual kinks -- or whatever was left of them in the screenplay -- as David Lean would later be in Blithe Spirit, or as director-co-writer Stephan Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) is here.
     
Incredibly, a better movie than Hitchcock‘s has been fashioned by Elliott. For one thing, he has a better cast in less dolorous roles. Instead of Isabel Jeans and Ian Hunter, suffering in an alcohol-blighted household, Elliott has the unsettlingly gorgeous Jessica Biel as scrumptious interloper, new wife and lady racer Larita, Ben Barnes as her Bridesheadishly wimpy spouse John, and, as the Whittakers, John’s icily intolerant mother and his surprisingly receptive father, the resplendently bitchy Kristin Scott Thomas, and the pride of the BBC Pride and Prejudice, Colin Firth.
   
There’s sumptuous scenery and cinematography, guilty secrets, horrid sisters, saucy fox hunts and glamorous BMWs. The whole movie has the blithe air and spirit of a musical comedy romance and indeed, Ellliott peppers it with five songs by Coward (including, tellingly,  “Mad About the Boy”) and three by the equally gay Cole Porter, ending the show with a rousing ensemble number by the cast. There’s something a little cruel about the show, but Coward knew how to play his audience and so does Elliott. I should mention, by way of warning, that this is the only movie I have never seen where the sympathetic heroine sat on and squashed to death a tiny, yelping lapdog -- though I guess the Humane Society monitored everything.

Read Michael Wilmington on DVDs

- Michael Wilmington
May 21, 2009

Recent Columns

5.14.09 - Angels and Demons, Summer Hours, The Brothers Bloom
5.07.09 - Star Trek, Next Day Air, The Limits of Control, Rudo y Cursi, Battle for Terra
4.30.09 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and Hunger
4.23.09 - The Soloist, The Informers, Tyson and Fighting
4.16.09 - State of Play, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, American Violet, Is Anybody There, The Song of Sparrows
4.09.09 - Observe and Report, Hannah Montana: The Movie, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Gigantic, and Sin Nombre
4.02.09 - Fast & Furious, Silent Light, Sugar, Adventureland, and Paris 36
3.26.09 - Monsters Vs. Aliens, The Haunting in Connecticut, Z, and Shall We Kiss?