Drive-In Double Header: SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and BATTLESHIP

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) – Directed by Rupert Sanders – Starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin, Lily Cole, Sam Spruell, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Johnny Harris, Toby Jones, Eddie Marsan, Ray Winstone, Brian Gleeson, and Nick Frost.

Battleship (2012) – Directed by Peter Berg – Starring Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker, Tadanobu Asano, Hamish Linklater, Jesse Plemons, John Tui, Gregory Gadson, Adam Godley, Peter MacNicol, and Peter Berg.

According to yesterday’s Google Doodle, June 6, 2012 was the 79th Anniversay of the First Drive-In Movie. The first drive-in opened in Pennsauken, New Jersey and the first film was Wives Beware. Seventy-nine years later, I was at the West Wind Drive-In in Reno to watch a doubleheader of SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and BATTLESHIP, an seemingly odd pairing of films that actually ended up complimenting each other rather well.

I love the drive-in; I can remember seeing Star Wars for the first time at a drive-in, as me and my brother sat in the back seat of my dad’s Ford Granada. I wasn’t even old enough to be in kindergarten, yet I can remember all kinds of things from that night – not just the movie but the snack bar, the playground, the clunky metal speaker you had to attach to your windows, and even the bathrooms. I love that every drive-in I’ve been in over the years (which, admittedly, probably barely touches double digits) seems stuck in the ’50s. Even last night, in a drive-in with four screens going, the snack bar and bathrooms don’t look like they’ve been updated in at least four decades. (Though they were clean, which is the important thing.) The prices were reasonable and the popcorn was really tasty – as long as you got a piece that had been hit by the butter.

Looking around at the other screens, I had The Avengers followed by Dark Shadows to my left, The Chernobyl Diaries and the Dictator to my right, and Men in Black 3 and The Hunger Games behind me. I have no idea how these movies were selected to be paired with one another, but I was happy about our pairing because I hadn’t seen either film before tonight.

Both SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN and BATTLESHIP were pretty good films and they ended up complimenting each other rather well. SNOW WHITE is a bit of a feminist, fairy tale power fantasy while BATTLESHIP is a straight-up masculine, military stroke-fest.

Both films are heavy on CGI spectacle, but they use the technology differently; in SNOW WHITE, it’s done to enhance the natural world while in BATTLESHIP, it’s done to enhance the technological gang bang going on between the Navy and the alien ships. While the Drive-In experience doesn’t provide the best screen experience, both films looked beautiful, and it’s to the credit of all the CGI artists involved that these films looked so different from one another, but both were still beautifully rendered.

While both films were more hit than miss, they moved in opposite directions; SNOW WHITE started strong and then sort of petered out, while BATTLESHIP started out as horribly derivative and predictable as you can imagine and then somehow rebounded into a highly enjoyable second half. It’s not hard to pinpoint the reason why, either, because while BATTLESHIP perfectly understood what it’s here for, SNOW WHITE takes itself way too seriously for a summer movie experience. WHITE feels like a November film as it just stubbornly refuses to let us have any fun. It’s fine that WHITE wants to take itself seriously; I truly admire the attempt at what director Rupert Sanders is attempting, but if you’re going to send a movie out to the public in the summer and you’re going to play things this seriously, you’d better deliver something truly special and while WHITE is good, it’s not special.

Everyone in WHITE is dour. Snow (Kristen Stewart) is understandably miserable after being trapped in a tower prison while her stepmother Ravenna (Charlize Theron) rules the kingdom after murdering Snow’s dad. Ravenna doesn’t get to have much fun because she’s obsessed with staying young and beautiful, which means she’s always killing young people to regenerate herself. Her brother Finn (Sam Spruell) is eternally grumpy because the worst haircut in the kingdom. The Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) isn’t a happy because because he’s in debt, and he’s a drunkard, and his life has basically just been in a downward spiral because his wife was murdered by the Queen’s forces. After Snow escapes and Ravenna forces the Huntsman to get her back, and then the Huntsman tells Finn to go screw and promises to get Snow to a castle where the opposition forces are hanging out, the two of them rush through the Dark Woods meeting all sorts of unhappy people: a troll, an all-woman sanctuary shrouded by fog, and the dwarves, who are not called names like Grumpy and Dopey, but rather names like Beith (Ian McShane) and Gort (Ray Winstone).

WHITE is so set on taking itself seriously that’s there no wink to the audience with the dwarves beyond one reference someone makes to whistling. No, these dwarves wandered out of Middle Earth at some point and got lost in the Dark Forest. It’s a shame because the film needs some levity, and the dwarves could have provided it.

The Hunger Games is not a bucket of chuckle monkeys, either, but that film does a much better job lightening the mood from time to time. Even in serious films you need to provide a few beats for the audience to catch their breath and exhale or open up another line of thought, and WHITE never does that. Truthfully, the film fails all over the narrative board – while the basic structure is perfectly sound, it’s the little decisions that catch up with the film. The relationship between Snow and the Huntsman never really comes together. It’s his kiss that awakens her from Ravenna’s poison apple spell, but there isn’t a romance between them. In fact, after his drunken monologue that ends with the kiss that awakens her, the Huntsman’s role is severely diminished from their on out

The movie is a chase film during the middle portion as Finn and the Queen’s men hunt Snow down, but Sanders utterly fails to make them a consistent threat. If you’ve got pursuers, you need to feel their presence pushing the protagonists forward (like in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), but I never felt that threat. Instead, they just show up every so often and shoot people.

The best scene in the movie comes after they’ve met up with the dwarves. Snow awakens early and follows some fairies into a clearing in the woods, and all the animals are drawn to her. We get honest-to-goodness beauty here, and it’s a much needed change of pace from all the greys and browns that permeate the film. Snow has been brought before the White Hart, who blesses her before getting shot by Finn’s men. There’s a real sense here of Snow as the woman who can make the world a better place, and in a few minutes of seeing rabbits look cute and stare at her we get a better sense of her importance than in all the times people tell us she’s important.

Show don’t tell, kids.

Unfortunately, no one in the film is really called up to act – Kristen Stewart simply has to look pained and driven, Hemsworth has to breath hard and swing an axe, and Theron has to look gorgeous and proclaim death. They can all manage this but I wish they’d been given more to do. I wish that the people and animals and trolls whose lives Snow touched during her chase through the Dark Forest came back and fought with her at the end, but they don’t.

SNOW WHITE is a film that’s good but could have been something much more with a defter narrative touch and some brighter moments sprinkled in.

As for BATTLESHIP, the movie is exactly what it says it’s going to be – a big war movie between Navy ships and alien ships. The film starts out laughably bad as we’re introduced to bad boy Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), who’s 26 and doesn’t have a job and who thinks it’s a good idea to break into a convenience store after hours to get a burrito to give to Samantha Shane (Brooklyn Decker). There’s all kinds of ridiculous implausibilities here, but why wouldn’t there be in a film like this?

The whole opening half-hour or so just felt like one big homage to Top Gun, except with less homo eroticism. (They play shirts-on soccer here instead of shirts-off volleyball, for instance.) We get all sorts of completely unnecessary and pointless subplots about Hopper’s relationship with his brother and that Samantha isn’t just a hot blonde who’s into burritos, but the daughter of the Big Cheese Naval Man in Hawaii, Liam Neeson. We have to sit through Hopper getting dressed down by his brother for being a loser and Hopper psyching himself up (not once, but twice) to ask Liam Neeson for permission to marry Sam.

When the aliens show up and things start blowing up, that’s when BATTLESHIP becomes entertaining. Unlike WHITE, BATTLESHIP knows that it’s good to lighten the mood every now and then.

But really, sh*t gets blown up. That’s what BATTLESHIP sells, and that’s what BATTLESHIP delivers. It’s a clumsy story at times, but there’s enough little things here, like the alien’s artillery looking like the plastic pieces from the board game or for a sequence in which the Navy has to try and attack the alien vessels in a manner similar to the game, as the soldiers need to try and guess where the enemy will be. I love these bits, just like I love how Hopper and the rest of our heroes end up asking some World War II vets for help during the final battle.

As great as these bits are, however, don’t let yourself think BATTLESHIP is anything but pro-military masturbation.

If I was going back to the movie theater tomorrow, I’d probably pick watching BATTLESHIP over SNOW WHITE, but I have a greater fondness for what WHITE is attempting.

WRATH OF THE TITANS: Being Half Human Makes You Stronger Than a God

Wrath of the Titans (2012) – Directed by Jonathan Liebesman – Starring Sam Worthington, Rosamund Pike, Édgar Ramírez, Toby Kebbell, Danny Huston, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy, and Bubo (for about ten seconds).

Giving credit where credit is due, WRATH OF THE TITANS addresses one of my biggest problems with its predecessor, Louis Leterrier’s CLASH OF THE TITANS remake: the disconnect in the acting performances of the gods (Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes) and the mortals (Sam Worthington and nearly everyone else). I felt that Neeson and Fiennes were approaching their roles like CLASH was a popcorn flick and Worthington was approaching his like he was making Gladiator and the result sent a sour note wringing in my ears.

WRATH puts everyone on the same level (Worthington’s) and the result is a better, more serious film, but also one that’s lacking in the fun department.

WRATH OF THE TITANS is very close to being a very good popcorn movie. What holds it back, in my estimation, is that it’s just not quite fun enough to make me look forward to watching it again. There are moments here that are actually quite fun but the movie seems completely determined to treat this story of the potential end of the world like it’s, well, actually the end of the world instead of a story in which talented actors with bad hair battle CGI giants with murky features to keep us common folk entertained for 2 hours.

Perseus (Sam Worthington) doesn’t do so well flying the winged horse Perseus, for instance, and after a shaky flight and rough landing, he remarks to the horse, “You used to be better at this.” In response, Pegasus slaps Perseus in the back with one of his massive wings. It’s a small moment, to be sure, but it got real laughs from the audience and I have to wonder if the folks they test screened this film for didn’t want to see more humor or if the filmmakers were so sure of what they were doing that they ignored/missed the positive reaction to the small amount of humor that’s here.

Because what I took from watching WRATH, and what a good number of the folks seated around me in the theater seemed to be taking from the film, is that while we liked it, we really wanted to like it a lot more. Instead of being a sequel that feels repetitive and tired, WRATH OF THE TITANS is a film that’s found it’s groove. The story is simple: Hades has imprisoned his brother Zeus in order to allow their captured father Kronos free to destroy the Earth and Perseus quests to Hell to save his dad. Jonathan Liebesman is not nearly as stylish a director as Louis Leterrier, but the story has been tightened and the acting has improved, and even with all the CGI monsters causing havoc, there’s also a wonderful old school vibe to WRATH that kept pulling me in.

Nowhere in the film is this felt more than when Perseus, Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), and Agenor (Toby Kebbell) battle through some Cyclops to make it to the hut of Hephaestus (Bill Nighy), the fallen god and weapon maker. Nighy is brilliantly crazed here as the hermitic god, channeling his inner Patrick Troughton circa Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. When they visit him, Hephaestus keeps yapping to an unseen figure behind him. The clear implication is that he’s nuts and simply talking to himself. But he’s not.

He’s talking to Bubo.

Yeah, Bubo.

Good on the filmmakers for making that nod back to the original CLASH OF THE TITANS film, but shame on them for not recognizing that their film needs more scenes like this – and not because it pays respect to the original, but because it gives the audience a chance to exhale and have a laugh amidst all of Perseus’ grim looks and Andromeda’s concerned, open mouthed stares.

The laughter should come from Agenor. Half-human son of Poseidon (Danny Huston), Agenor is imprisoned when Perseus visits Andromeda’s war camp to see him. He’s a bit of a drifter character who doesn’t take responsibility for anything and he’s good for a few laughs, but not enough. I like what the story does with Agenor, depicting his rise from ne’er-do-well to responsible citizen, but I wish he could have taken that journey while cracking wise a bit more often.

While the story here is rather grim, at least it’s a story and at least there’s some thematic consistency to WRATH. This film is all about what fathers and sons are willing to do for one another. Zeus asks his son Perseus for help because his own father, Kronos, is about to break free and destroy the world, while Perseus asks his son Helius (John Bell) to sit it out. After the events of the previous film, Perseus is living as a fisherman, raising his son to live a normal life. His wife, Io, is dead, and Perseus is content to live simply and away from the gods and monsters that have made him famous.

I usually dislike stories involving the reluctant hero, but WRATH does it well. I believe that Perseus likes his life and I can see that he loves his son and doesn’t want either to endanger him or break his promise to his deceased wife.

Humanity’s lack of faith in the gods, however, is causing them to lose their power. In a really nice bit of setting the story up, Zeus (Liam Neeson) tells Perseus that it’s not just the power of the gods that is lessening as a result of humanity’s lack of faith, but all of the things the gods have created. For WRATH, that means the walls to the prison of Tartarus are crumbling, which means Zeus’ father, Kronos, is in danger of escaping the prison where he’s been imprisoned.

Now, because you’re smart, I know what you’re asking: If the lack of faith in the gods is causing the gods to lose their power, why isn’t it also causing the Titans to lose their power?

The answer is, Don’t Think About It.

Hades and Ares (an excellent Édgar Ramírez) are sacrificing Zeus to Kronos, and Zeus’ daddy is siphoning off his son’s power to give him a boost, but the Titans seem less indebted to humanity’s prayers then their children. It really doesn’t matter, of course, because WRATH isn’t the kind of movie you go see because you’re expecting narrative complexity. You’re going for a bit of escapism and WRATH delivers on that; it has a skeletal enough script to carry the day, and that’s enough for me.

When Perseus convinces Agenor to come along and show him the way to Hephaestus, Andromeda decides to come along. “A Queen shouldn’t leave Greece,” Perseus tells her, but Andromeda shoots back, “Are you giving me orders now?” Does it make sense for the Queen to go on this rescue quest while her soldiers gather at another place? Probably not, but good for Andromeda for stepping up because that means we get to see more of Rosamund Pike, and the more Rosamund Pike I can see, the better. The fact that Andromeda can take care of herself makes it even better.

There’s a whole bunch of CGI action sequences and they’re all rather good without being spectacular. Battles against the Cyclops, Kronos, and Kronos’ minions all look pretty darn good.

While fathers and sons are the obvious theme, there’s also some nice touches on the subject of brotherhood. Ares betrays his father Zeus to team up with Uncle Hades (Ralph Fiennes) in part because he’s jealous of Zeus’ affection for Perseus. On the flip, Hades ends up betraying Ares and Kronos to help Zeus because of their brotherhood. Hades’ turn leads to one of the better moments in the film; after Zeus has been nearly slain by Ares, Hades gives his brother some of his own power to heal him. Zeus arises from his death bed and the two god brothers head on out to the field of battle for some rousing ass kicking.

Perseus saves the day by combining Zeus’ thunderbolt, Poseidon’s trident, and Hades pitchfork to form the Spear of How The Movie Ends, and he flies Pegasus down Kronos’ throat to slay the Titan. It’s good stuff, and hats off to the CGI folk for their efforts here. (I love how Kronos’ lava cools and hardens before it hits the ground.)

On the whole, then, WRATH OF THE TITANS is well worth some of your Saturday afternoon time. It’s a more solid movie than it’s predecessor and even though Sam Worthington has the charisma of fossilized wood, there’s enough personality with Neeson, Fiennes, and Kubbell to keep things moving. WRATH is a perfectly good sword and monsters movie, and it could have been truly Popcorn Elite had it been a bit less grim.

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CLASH OF THE TITANS Review Index

CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981): End of the Line for Ray Harryhausen
CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010): No titans Were Harmed in the Making of This Film
WRATH OF THE TITANS (2012): Being Half Human Makes You Stronger Than a God

LOVE ACTUALLY: The Classic Fool

Love Actually (2003) – Directed by Richard Curtis – Starring Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Sienna Guillory, Lúcia Moniz, Liam Neeson, Thomas Sangster, Bill Nighy, Gregor Fisher, Martine McCutcheon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln, Laura Linney, Rodrigo Santoro, Kris Marshall, Abdul Salis, Heike Makatsch, Martin Freeman, Joanna Page, Olivia Olson, Billy Bob Thornton, Rowan Atkinson, Claudia Schiffer, Nina Sosanya, Ivana Milicevic, January Jones, Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth, Denise Richards, Lulu Popplewell, and Marcus Brigstocke.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I write a lot of reviews. I don’t like to call them reviews, as you’re probably sick of hearing me say, but reactions because I just want to talk about what I want to talk about.

I’m selfish that way.

Nonetheless, it’s hard for me to just sit and watch a movie. I’ve long since learned to keep my mouth shut while watching a movie with other people (most of the time, at least), but my brain is always humming. There are times when I think of how nice it would be to simply sit and watch a movie and enjoy it without analyzing it.

Which brings us to LOVE ACTUALLY.

I adore Richard Curtis’ love letter to love, and it’s one of the few movies that I can simply sit and watch and enjoy without my brain getting in the way. Yeah, I see the plot holes and contrivances, and I see the weak resolutions and the lack of actual depth, but I don’t care. LOVE ACTUALLY is crisp, funny, and deeply moving. It is impeccably acted, and while Curtis trades any deep examination of love for lighthearted sentimentalism, it doesn’t stop this wonderful film from being ridiculously touching and life-affirming.

That’s code for: it makes me weep uncontrollable tears of happiness.

It’s the rare movie that makes me cry – and I don’t mean getting all lumpy-throated or misty-eyed, but produce actually crying. I don’t think any movie ever hit me as hard as Cinema Paradiso (and if you haven’t seen Giuseppe Tornatore’s masterpiece, get over your hatred of Italians and watch it), but LOVE ACTUALLY does the trick, too. I don’t mean to imply that I’m some kind of robotic bad-ass incapable of emotions, either, but generally that I’m the kind of guy that isn’t going to believe the puppet is real if I can see the strings being pulled by amateurs. Curtis, however, is so deft at manipulating emotions and presents so many separate plots that it allows him to stick to the surface and juggle the highlights around. This style prevents us from really getting to know the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) or Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), but we get to see them at their most important love-related moments.

By having something like nine separate plots, we’re constantly jumping from one strand to the next. Some subplots are more important than others, but all of them have their moments.

And, you know, here is where I’d normally break the film down and talk about how fantastic Hugh Grant is as David (the Prime Minister) who might humble and stumble at first but has a real strength for protecting the picked-upon, whether it’s his nation or Natalie (the equally fantastic Martine McCutcheon). Or how the relationship between Daniel (Liam Neeson) and Sam (Thomas Sangster) is completely charming, or how Colin’s journey to America is sorta stupid, or how Martin Freeman and Joanna Page are sorta wasted in a cute but repetitive bit, or how I sometimes forget just how wonderful an actress Emma Thompson is until she makes you feel every single tear she sheds when she discovers that her husband (Alan Rickman) gave an expensive piece of jewelry to his hot, young secretary instead of her.

But I’m not going to do it this time. Silly as it sounds when we’re talking about a movie that’s about sharing, I really don’t want to share too much about my thoughts on this film. I don’t want to have to think too hard about it; I’ll over-analyze most everything but like a kid not wanting to hear the truth about Santa Claus for fear that it’ll ruin Christmas, I don’t want to turn my critical eye too sharply towards LOVE ACTUALLY. I just want to adore it. It’s silly, of course, because just like you still get presents after you realize Santa Claus doesn’t have time to visit every kid in the world on one night, and so hires out your parents on a work-for-hire basis, I’m sure LOVE ACTUALLY would still satisfy after I broke it down.

Maybe next year.

Be sure to check out the Holiday Review Index for all the Holiday-themed reviews to be found at Atomic Anxiety.