Review: Mud

Lionsgate

Dewitt, a dry, dirty, small town in Arkansas. The deep American south. Lower class families living along the Mississippi river make a living by selling fish out of coolers from the back of old pickup trucks or sifting through junk on the bottom of the river hoping to find something of value. This is the setting for writer/director Jeff Nichols' 3rd film which follows two 14 year-old boys who help out with their family's business and in their spare time explore the great Mississippi River in a dingy old motorboat. On one such adventure they go to discover a boat stranded up in a tree on an island in hopes of making it their own but find a stranger has beaten them to it. He's got long matted hair, tanned, dirty skin with a snake tattoo winding its way down his right arm. He asks for their help in getting him some food, and when asked his name, he replies "Mud. You can call me Mud."

The tale of youths discovering a stranger on an island in the Mississippi should be familiar to most people who had to read Huckleberry Finn in high school. Nichols' was and is definitely influenced by the likes of Mark Twain and other American authors when he made this film. I'd say, with his first two films Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter, Nichols is establishing himself as the Cormac McCarthy of film. His quiet, focused style is honest and straightforward and with carefully controlled bursts of emotion and action. His settings in the Midwest and Southern areas of the U.S. evoke not only Twain but John Steinbeck and Walt Whitman. He recalls the heart of America and themes that such authors as these have written about over the past two hundred years.

Review: Star Trek: Into Darkness

It took 4 years, but J.J. Abrams (Super 8, Star Trek) finally got around to giving us a sequel to the highly successful, and great, 2009 reboot of the Star Trek franchise. Over the past 5 years or so (or even further back if you count his involvement with the TV show Lost) Abrams has become a name associated with high quality Sci-Fi cinema outings and is quickly becoming ranked next to and favored by the likes of Steven Spielberg. Abrams even admitted that Spielberg had a hand in convincing him to accept the director's chair for helming the next Star Wars film recently purchased by Disney which plans to expand the new saga from a galaxy far far away into a new trilogy beginning in 2015. On top of this, Abrams has had his hand in many a project over the past 4 years as producer or director in the case of Super 8. Still, with the success of the first Star Trek, you would think that Paramount would've put more pressure on getting around to making the next Star Trek.

In this case, it seems no one was in any hurry and decided to use the long wait to drum up as much hype as possible. The fast-rising star of Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock, War Horse, The Hobbit) mixed with the rumor of the return of Star Trek super-villain Khan increased the size of the expectant audience which was already enlarged by the first film beyond just Trekkies. Suffice to say, Abrams had a much bigger fan-base to please this time around.

Review: Iron Man 3

I think that Iron Man 3 will be remembered as one of the greatest successes of film marketing in movie history. It wasn't the brilliance of the marketing in any specific way, but rather the sheer reach and presence. For anyone who watched TV, accessed the internet, or went anywhere in the last few months, you know what I'm talking about. In his keynote speech at the San Francisco International Film Festival last month, Steven Soderbergh referred to the marketing strategy as "carpet bombing." A tactic studios use to make audiences believe that a movie is going to be an enormous event that should not be missed. After seeing incessant ads, trailers, and posters for it everywhere, the only option left for citizens of the world to forget about this thing is by seeing it. In that regard, Iron Man 3 was a huge success. It now stands as the 2nd highest grossing film of all time next to The Avengers (produced by Marvel, owned by Disney) with a total gross of $949 million as of 20 hours ago posted by comingsoon.net. Now, the question is, does it deserve such recognition or profit?

The answer is a simple no. It does not. Attempting to be a sort of sequel to The Avengers rather than Iron Man 2 (a poor sequel, in my opinion), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is supposed to be going through some sort of crisis. He can't sleep, and he begins to experience panic attacks which all seem to relate to what "happened in New York" with the "worm hole." Stark seems to be suffering from the same thing every super hero goes through eventually: who am I really? The hero or a man? This supposed problem with Stark's identity and finding his real purpose is half-hearted at best and never feels serious enough. The over all lame attempts at comedic relief counter-act any chance at the audience taking Stark's crisis seriously. On top of that, the potentially interesting and genuinely evil character and acts of a terrorist nicknamed "the Mandarin" (Sir Ben Kingsley) come off as out of place and too serious when placed alongside the rest of the film. What you get is a muddling of attempts at character development and focusing a plot that end up fighting each other for the spotlight. The audience is unsure of what to make of the human elements at play in the midst of loud, blinding action scequences.