Battle: Los Angeles

Wants to be Black Hawk Down with aliens. But the script never expounds upon who the aliens are, what they want, or how to kill them. Remember in Predator? The discoveries? “It can’t see me if I’m covered in mud.” None of that here. One guy hits an alien on the left side and that enough for the grunts to conclude, “That must be where the heart is!” Another guy just guesses, a stab in the dark, “They must want our water!” Shouldn’t there be a scientist, a Jeff Goldblum type, to explain all of this? There isn’t. Well-filmed, hand-held battle scenes don’t necessarily yield an interesting movie.

Rango

I’m not sure who will see this unusual and affecting movie. It almost seems pointless to say these days, because most animated movies continue to amaze me, (Me, the guy who grew up watching Scooby Doo…) but the animation is awesome. The majestic lighting, the expressive faces of the characters and the lopsided camera angles are a sensory feat. But there’s also an outlaw sensibility here; a different way to skin a cat -- a cerebral one. Hunter S. Thompson, spaghetti western and Chinatown references seem much more geared toward film-literate adults than kids or families. It’s a miracle this even got green-lit except that Gore Verbinsky has made a LOT of money for a LOT of people. How is it that this script didn’t get bogged down in studio story notes?? There’s barely any internal logic, even for animation. (Some birds talk, but others are for riding horseback?) It's scary. It's dark. It’s existential. It’s about finding meaning in your life. Who wants that from their family animation? But I LAUGHED -- more than I’ve laughed at most comedies. More than I laughed during Black Swan. And that’s really saying something, because I loved Black Swan and I thought it was hysterical. So, I’m not sure how they’re going to market this movie, and I’m not sure who’s going to see it, but it’s not really my job to worry about those things, is it? I just know that it made my cranky soul cackle, in spite of myself, with bemused joy.