Reviews by JxSxPx

I’m not really sure what to say or make of The Diary of a Chambermaid. What an utterly bizarre and strange movie this is. It seems to be stitched together from three disparate films and unleashed upon the world to confound it at every turn. Equal parts cynical treatise against opportunism, a frothy romance between a brooding rich man and a gold-digging maid, a melodrama about class warfare and if it had stuck to any of these parts and widely varying tones, or more smoothly integrated them into the overall film, Chambermaid would have emerged a much better product.

Paulette Goddard is game for anything that the script throws at her, but the drastic tonal shifts and imbalances in emotional heft render her performance more than a little wobbly. She’s eternally a delightful presence, a mixture of good looks, an almost tomboyish approach to physical comedy and an elemental spark in her eyes that comes alive onscreen. Chaplin brought out the best of her in Modern Times and The Great Dictator, but Jean Renoir can’t seem to decide if he wants our sympathies with or against her. Yes, she’s a scheming gold-digger, but Howard Hawks made us love his two scheming gold-diggers in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, so it’s not a question of likable character or not. It’s an uncertainty over who is the main character, our rooting interest in the film.

If it’s not Goddard’s titular chambermaid, then it’s either the stone-faced but menacing valet (Francis Lederer) or the handsome but distant son of the wealthy family she works for (Hurd Hatfield). They each fall for the chambermaid and seek to liberate her from the life of subservience, but neither seems to realize that she’s perfectly capable of doing it on her own terms. No matter, they come to represent the film’s complicated look at the class-warfare struggles and the complicity of all involved. The first chunk’s sub-Preston Sturges romanticism stands in stark contrast to the complete 180 the latter half takes. Frankly, I think the latter half is a more interesting film to make with these characters. As it stands, The Diary of a Chambermaid is a deeply weird film, unable to decide what its identity is, but not entirely unworthy of a glance. If only to be slapped around by Renoir working in Hollywood – which should have been a big tip off to the hallucinatory strangeness that followed.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? is every bit as darkly satirical, cartoonish, loopy, and entertaining as the previous pairing between director Frank Tashlin and star Jayne Mansfield, The Girl Can’t Help It. This one may actually be better. Once more, Frank Tashlin gets an actual performance out of Jayne Mansfield, a 1950s sex goddess who seemed stitched together from various materials to make an iconic blonde bombshell but was somehow missing that central spark that made Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, or Marilyn Monroe so endearing.

Mostly tasked to goof on the “dumb blonde” persona which she designed herself as, and eventually led to her painting her image into a corner, Mansfield seems to be having a grand time poking holes at the conceit. When tasked to bring out the actual woman behind the giggly top-heavy blonde goddess she excels. There’s a fragility and battle-scarred soul beneath that helium voice and wiggly body. Her penchant for squealing a lot or trying to talk while inhaling does grate on the nerves since she overdoes these mannerisms, but more often than not, she creates a very vivid portrait of a movie star trapped within the confines of her own self-created myth. And her commitment to that myth is quite extraordinary, from the change in voice and demeanor to the poodle that has dyed fur to match her various outfits throughout the film. More roles like this might have made me warm up to her more.

The plot itself pivots on her publicity stunts to make her TV Tarzan beau jealous. That her real-life paramour Mickey Hargitay plays the TV muscle man is an amusing enough bit that only adds to the meta-commentary of Mansfield and her role. On top of that is the plot revolving around Tony Randall, as advertising man Rockwell Hunter that Mansfield ropes into her publicity schemes. If he plays along with her, she’ll turn around and pay him back by starring in his lipstick ad campaign. That Randall, a nobody on his way to mediocrity at his job, becomes uber-famous for just being photographed with the beautiful star isn’t a shock, or even much of a satire.

It’s once his stock at the company starts to rise just by being around her without having accomplished anything that the darkly comic stuff starts happening. Just by keeping the advertising company in the news, however peripherally, he continually is promoted up the corporate ladder, and the executive bathroom keys become some kind of bourgeois status symbol. However, perhaps the most jaundiced and bluntest of satirical fun is had during the opening credits in which television ads are parodied, culminating in a washing machine getting into a tug-of-war with a spokeswoman.

Or maybe it’s the numerous scenes in which Tashlin once again pokes fun at the 1950s obsession with breasts, television, and what success means in America. Mansfield’s presence upends Hunter’s life, obviously, but it also sends his long-time fiancée into an emotional tailspin. Believing that his publicity stunt romance with Mansfield is real, Betsy Drake spends a significant amount of time trying to expand her bust, culminating in a scene in which she wears a padded bra, a tight sweater, and squeals like a dolphin around Randall’s office as a flirtation tactic to win him back.

Even more acid is thrown upon television during an intermission in which the nature and quality of it is compared less favorably to a movie theater. Randall breaks the fourth wall, speaks with the audience, shrinks the screen, loses the color, and talks up the greatness of television. Tashlin’s out for blood in this sequence, made during the height of Hollywood’s paranoia about television over-taking them as the dominant cultural force. Some of the satire may be blunted for a modern audience, but it’s still a very funny conceptual bit of satirical comedy.

Tashlin’s view of success in advertising, hell in America based on this and The Girl Can’t Help It, is suspicious to the point of maniac glee. A climatic scene in which Randall has managed to luck his way into becoming the president of his advertising firm is a glorious convergence of color, acting, and comedy. He stares at his name at the top of the firm’s doors, and they begin to sparkle in various colors. Randall then sees Mansfield dressed in a skimpy bikini covered with bills and coins, giggling and wiggling all over his office. His erotic glee is palpable, and he salivates harder over his business and professional luck than the half-naked pin-up he hallucinates in front of him.

Much of this makes Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? like a heartless, pitch black satire, but the film has a beating, bruised heart in the form of Joan Blondell. Blondell offers up the movie’s lone moment of naked, vulnerable emotional honesty. Normally, Blondell was hired by studios to be the sarcastic, blowsy, tough-talking sidekick dame to the more conventional lead, and she does a similar thing here as Mansfield’s assistant. But in a scene in which Mansfield and Blondell have a heart-to-heart about why Mansfield keeps choosing the wrong men, purposefully remaking ordinary guys into stars in a similar manner to how a svengali took Mansfield from obscurity to star, Blondell shares a story about a milkman who broke her heart. Amid the various scenarios that equate success with knowingly, or unknowingly but willingly, prostituting yourself in some way, this scene smacks you in the face. It’s brief, but it proves that these characters deserve a happy ending for all they’ve had to endure, and when they get it, they’ve earned through hellfire and heartbreak.

But Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? always works best whenever it focuses in on Mansfield. Tashlin took her and made her into the cartoonish post-modern vulgar icon of 1950s materialism and breast obsession. No other director was quite so sympathetic to her or knew how to highlight her gifts. Together they created an anarchic sex kitten that was much happier being a sweet, nice girl, and it’s a pity that no other vehicle could be made to expand upon this unique spin on the dumb blonde persona. At least these two films endure.

On paper a cyber-punk rendition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sounds like a genius move. So leave it to SyFy to fuck it all up.

Long on style with but a footnote on plot, Alice is a lifeless thing that constantly tries to make itself interesting. And the titular heroine takes herself far too seriously. There is no sense of joy, menace, naughtiness or fun in this Wonderland. It’s a cold, sterile world in which no one really seems mad so much as they’re all dressed up for a fetishistic future rave party.

Caterina Scorsone doesn’t make much of an impression as Alice; she looks dour and knows karate. This coupled with the fact that her dad ran out on her when was really young and left her with an inability to have a successful relationship or commit is about the extent of her character development. We’re already off to a note that is far too serious for something based on Lewis Caroll’s whimsical yet nightmarish story.

So thank god for Andrew Lee Potts, Matt Frewer and Kathy Bates as the Mad Hatter, White Knight and Queen of Hearts, respectively. Frewer gets in touch with his inner manic and deliriously loopy side and transforms the White Knight into something that threatens to hark back to the original text. Bates, a perfect choice for the role, plays her Queen like Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate. She’s the ultimate bad mother, and Bates gives the role a campy élan that makes this Queen something between a steely drag queen and a petulant brat. And Potts, so adorable that I spent most of the running time just fawning at him, at least makes his Hatter a bit of a rogue. His smile is cheeky and mischievous, his loyalty is questionable, and he’s got a great physicality for the role. It’s a pity that Tim Curry and Harry Dean Stanton are wasted as the Dodo and Caterpillar, one-and-done scene characters who are hyped up to be more important than they actually are.

This Wonderland looks like Blade Runner as told by the Brothers Grimm when viewed in cityscape. But we spend most of our time stuck in interiors that look like abandoned hospitals or too clean sets. The Queen’s casino should have been more inventive and original than it actually ends up being. It’s a bit of a wash in the end. So much potential just wasted on a version of the story without much joy or imagination.

There was a brief period of time when Hallmark was able to take their penchant for bloated CGI, rushed story-telling and liberal use of celebrities in thankless roles and actually turn out a TV movie that was worth watching, that made these flaws less noticeable through sheer force of will and hard work. Merlin is one such example.

That makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy it, and I very much did. It’s just that it’s also got more than its fair share of problems. An over reliance on too many characters means that developing many of them becomes practically impossible to do, and watching them suddenly try to develop Nimue in the second half is wince inducing. She exists solely as the romantic interest of Merlin, and a prop for Queen Mab to use as a tool for her schemes and grand manipulations. Any heart or soul in the character is from Isabella Rossellini’s gifts as an actress and mere presence.

Even Merlin, whom the show is named after, never really takes on any complicated shape beyond how he’s sketched in during the first hour. Sam Neill is perfectly fine in the role though. He brings a prankster’s twinkle to his younger days and an old man’s remorse to the latter ones, but in-between he is hopelessly naïve or strangely cocky about his skills and knowledge. These contradictions are never smoothly integrated into one complete character, and a few more scenes of Merlin just talking and interacting with other characters and less CGI trickery would have solved this issue.

There is a lot to like about Merlin though. In addition to Rossellini and Neill other fine actors give their unique spins on characters from the Arthurian legends. Helena Bonham Carter gives her typically loopy and strange reading to Morgan Le Fey, Miranda Richardson is fantastic as both the villainous Mab and the serene Lady of the Lake, Martin Short reveals tremendous depths in the original creation of Frik who begins life as a villain’s side-kick and transforms into a more soulful and human character. Rutger Hauer, John Gielgud, James Earl Jones, Lena Headey and Jason Done are wasted in their all too brief roles, becoming little more than cameos and making one wonder how such a strong group of actors agreed to such tiny parts.

Another thing to appreciate is the production values. Every penny is present and accounted for in the luxurious costumes, impressive camera work and editing, and special effects which are very high-quality for television work. That dragon is particularly unique and impressive looking, as are transformation scenes in which characters become young, old, beautiful, or, in one instance, a face melts off. It’s smoothly done, but sometimes a little distracting from the central conflict of Christianity replacing the old pagan gods and goddess.

Granted, no version of this story could be properly told without a large helping of special effects work, but they could have been more accessibly incorporated into the story. There are times when one gets pulled out of the story wondering why they chose that effect instead of just appreciating it. Still, Merlin is a romp, problem-filled but still solidly constructed. It zips by at a very quick pace, never loses our interest and is beautiful to look at. It’s a nice three hour investment.

MTV’s Spider-Man cartoon was halfway there, “there” being a more adult and mature animated take on the popular Marvel hero. His angst felt more palpable, and his actions, or inactions, caused real world implications and left people hurt or damaged in some way. His romantic life was finally something other than pandering and ornamentation to appease the female audience, I assume that’s the thinking behind it but I have no proof.

So it’s a bit of a bummer to announce that the other half of the series is pretty terrible. It’s not too terrible a choice to keep Spider-Man isolated away from the rest of the Marvel universe, and maybe there were some rights issues involved in bringing in outside characters. But the reliance upon “original” villains who bear a striking resemblance to the more traditional rogues gallery flop more often than they hit. It could be something as simple as this: we’re never given much development or reason to care about any character aside from Peter Parker.

A variation of Black Cat, here dubbed Talon, is giving no backstory yet we’re expected to feel something for her as she constantly proclaims that no one knows what she’s been through or how she became what she is. You know what would have made a better episode? One which detailed the complicating factors that drove her to a life as a criminal. The series works best when it bothers to create a reason to care about its heroes and villains, towards the end of the run the introduction and emotionally tangled relationship between our hero and Electro shows us what the series could have been.

Another thing that keeps the show from really rising above is the hit and miss vocal work. Since this is MTV and they have connections to many famous musicians, a variety of TRL staples provides the voices for many characters. Eve is terrible as the voice of Talon, Rob Zombie does much better as the Lizard, Lisa Loeb is decent as Mary Jane, but the series does best when it lets actual actors do the heavy lifting. Neil Patrick Harris is a brilliant choice for Spider-Man and delivers a nuanced reading of the character, Ethan Embrey is great as Electro, Michael Dorn is a solid Kraven the Hunter and Virginia Madsen does well with Silver Sable, to name but a few. The less said about Michael Clarke Duncan reprising his role as Kingpin and being forced to turn the character into a fast-food obsessed non-threatening fat-joke the better.

It’s all over the place in terms of quality, but it moving towards finally working the kinks out in the final stretch of episodes. If they had kept up this growth in season two, the series could have developed into something highly entertaining and different from the rest of the animated incarnations to make it worthwhile. Spider-Man may not be all that great, but the fabulous animation is always there to save the day.

While I do miss the Scottish-ness of the original text, something about translating the story to a Cold War era Soviet nation works. Perhaps the reality of that situation and time period lends itself easily to a tale filled with murder, betrayal, power struggles, mysticism and large scale battles. It brings a fresh twist to the oft-told story, yet it also highlights some of the problems with the film as a whole.

Rupert Goold had never made a movie, for television or otherwise, before and it shows. There’s a few sequences in the play which any adaptation needs to completely nail in order to be successful. Shakespearean scholars can debate which ones those are, but for me a few of them that spring to mind are the soliloquy in which Lady Macbeth says “Out, out damned spot” or any of the sequences with the Weird Sisters (they’re a favorite of mine so I am particularly defensive over them). Lady Macbeth’s sequence is a marvel of acting on behalf of Kate Fleetwood, and Goold wisely just pointed the camera at her and left it alone allowing for the power of the words to carry the scene.

The Weird Sisters are more problematic. They begin on a correct note in which they assemble a voodoo dolly of Macbeth out of spare equipment and body parts in an underground hospital. They remain always lurking in the background in various disguises, giving the impression that they’re controlling the actions and events from a close proximity. But the hyperactive editing and seizure inducing camera work derail the “Something wicked this way comes” sequence. The decision to have them rap the “Toil and trouble” potion is odd enough, but to have them dance around dead bodies and flail about like marionettes coming undone from their strings gives the whole thing an air of unintentional camp. Try as they might, the three actresses cannot overcome this hyperactive stylization.

But Goold is blessed to have Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood in the central roles. They bring a tremendous amount of feeling and layers to their parts. Fleetwood uses sexuality and subtle manipulations to encourage her husband to kill his enemies, and maybe even his friends, in order to rise to prominence. And Stewart, so beloved as Jean-Luc Picard, is a fine Macbeth. From the beginning we see the ambition growing in his eyes, mulling over the idea of murder if it is really helpful to long-term goal, and questioning what is his true fate and what is the machinations of his wife’s schemes and the Weird Sister’s meddling. These two keep the film on course when it ventures into strange territory and threatens to become something of a stylized mess. It may be imperfect, but for Stewart and Fleetwood alone it is worth a viewing.

Filmed versions of the Royal Shakespearean Company’s productions are the stock and trade of PBS Great Performances series. It’s a proud tradition in which great actors play the greatest roles in adaptations of the play that take risks and lead to surprising results, both good and bad. Great Performances: King Lear delivers onto us a fantastic performance from Sir Ian McKellan in which he gets to show-off his grand range and utilize his musical vocal intonations to usher forth the Bard’s great words.

It’s essentially a filmed play, one that has been opened up and given more ornate sets to work with, but still an opened up and filmed stage production. This isn’t a hindrance, as it manages to still give us great scenes of raging storms, cavernous and labyrinthine castle interiors, and a shanty town of refugees. There is a visual splendor to these sets, they create a different world, a world that is positioned somewhere between 19th century Slavic designs and something that doesn’t seem entirely out of place in, say, Game of Thrones. The budget may be smaller, but it still turns out believable enough results.

But the real reason to watch King Lear is for the, well, great performances. Sylvester McCoy is a little offbeat as the Fool striking a discordant note amongst the rest of the cast, but he’s the exception to the rule. Philip Winchester and Romola Garai as Edmund and Cordelia are standouts amongst the supporting cast. Winchester using his good looks to make a more seductive and scheming Edmund, and Garai is practically the definition of sweetness and loyalty.

But like any of Shakespeare’s plays named after the central character(s), King Lear lives and dies by whomever takes on the role. Luckily, Sir Ian McKellan is a great actor, one of tremendous depth and range. He’s a little too young for the role, but that doesn’t matter. His acts out the transition from smugly satisfied king to distraught and emotionally disturbed fallen man. In the end what emerges is the portrait of a man who has become humbled, by his own hubris, forces outside of his control, the elements and his own daughters who would happily commit murder to gain the most power. It’s a staggering piece of character work which only made me appreciate more the gravitas and pathos he brings to roles such as Magneto and Gandalf. Sometimes just watching a wonderful artist at work is all you really need.

It’s built upon and speaks the language of nerd culture. Video games, action figures, monster movies, comic books, anime and Saturday morning cartoons were clearly the steady dietary building blocks of Pacific Rim. And what those blocks built them into was a ripping good time.

As an artist, Guillermo del Toro seems to have two settings: prestige and fanboy. Sure, Pacific Rim doesn’t hold a candle to the lofty artistic heights of Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone, but it taps into that same smart, creative energy that fueled the two Hellboy movies. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a ton of imagination, creativity and lovingly detailed craft on display, because all of the money and love is right up there on the screen.

In his filmography, Pacific Rim may only out-rank Mimic and Cronos, but it still has many pleasures to offer. Let’s begin with the designs for the monsters, or as they’re dubbed here kaijus. The kaiju look like combinations of bats, apes, rhinos, sharks and other random animals assembled together, enlarged and filled with venom and mutated tongues. Lovingly detailed and thoughtfully crafted, these creatures are highly original, clearly descended from Godzilla and his gallery of foes but with their own unique spin. They’re obviously beings which have emerged from del Toro’s imagination, they wouldn’t be entirely out of place in Hellboy or smaller scale versions could fit into the world of Pan’s Labyrinth.

Each one got bigger, more deranged and enchanting than the last. To pick a favorite would be hard, but a few specific kaiju stick out in my mind and that’s most of the battle in crafting newer movie monsters. These creatures don’t have the benefit of being a highly specific archetype like a mummy or werewolf or vampire would. Kaiju means “strange creature” in Japanese so that’s a fairly broad net to work with.

To fight these creatures in the pre-apocalyptic future mankind has created gigantic robots piloted by two people called Jaegers. These reminded me not only of Transformers but Power Rangers, Voltron, Gundamn Wing and Battle of the Planets. Again, del Toro has taken these influences and popped out something wholly original on the other side. Clunky yet still beautiful to look at, these enormous mechanical men play out like a ten-year-old boys fevered play sessions with his action figures fighting his dinosaurs. Or maybe that’s just me projecting and remembering some fun times I had as a kid.

No matter, del Toro has also filled the cast with a quirky and strong bunch of actors. Charlie Hunnam does a fine job as the central character, and it doesn’t hurt one bit that he’s incredibly attractive and frequently shirtless. But none of that would matter if he couldn’t make us care about his character. Idris Elba practically drips authority by just looking sharp in his suit and standing ramrod straight. Charlie Day is fast-talking, shrill and hilarious as the fanboy cipher. Ron Perlman of course shows up, and he’s given a deliciously hammy and ridiculous supporting role. I would have liked to have seen more of him in the film. If they truly plan on making a sequel, and I’m not sure where else the story would go from here given how it ends, I’d love to follow his character around for a longer period of time.

The movie belongs to Rinko Kikuchi. Not only is she given the most engaging character and the fullest arch to act out, but she manages to layer her performance with enough pathos and genuine emotion to make the film even greater with her presence. After getting Oscar nominated for her emotionally naked and gut-wrenching performance in Babel, she’s managed to carve out a strange but immanently fascinating career in supporting parts in American films. She’s the best thing about The Brothers Bloom, and the same could be said about her work here. I hope del Toro finds more roles for her in his future projects.

Pacific Rim knows what it is, and does it all beautifully. There are enough interesting ideas and strong performances to keep it from going too brain-dead in spots, but there are a few moments where the dialog and events get too silly for even these seasoned actors to properly sell. Yet I still found that to be part of its charm.

It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, in fact it’s taken the well-worn paths of Revenge of the Nerds and Animal House (just to name two prime examples) and simply dresses them up in monstrous attire. It doesn’t really matter too much in the long run, despite not being as visionary, original or possessing as singular a voice as Monsters, Inc., the damn thing still works like a charm.

It works so well because it plants itself firmly into a goofy, humorous zone with jokes that work on multiple levels for all members of the audience. You can’t expect every sequel to be as perfect a jewel as Toy Story 2 or Toy Story 3, but thank god it’s in a completely different price range than the bargain basement slumming of the Cars franchise.

The mechanics of the plot are pretty routine: nerd and jock don’t get along but have the missing thing that the other half doesn’t, a misfit band of freaks all in one outcast fraternity, a hard-ass dean who is constantly on their cases, a campus-wide gauntlet, a large wager, our two leads becoming the best of friends. It’s like they went down the list and made triply sure that each and every point was checked off.

But hey, they got back the dynamic duo of Billy Crystal and John Goodman, and while they’re earlier variations of the beloved characters, it’s not hard to see how they get from this point in their lives to the characters we first fell in love with over a decade ago. Goodman’s arrogant, slacker jock is particularly humorous and exhibits the most amount of change.

The filmmakers were smart though to surround them with so much comic talent in the major and minor supporting roles. Sean Hayes and Dave Foley, who do sound incredibly similar, play Terri and Terry, a monster with two heads and each possessed with its own personality. Peter Sohn is Scott Squibbles, a pale little monster who has a particular disturbing technique for scaring kids. Joel Murray is a middle-aged college student named Don Carlton, Charlie Day is Art, who I’m having a hard time describing but was definitely my favorite new character aside from Julia Sweeney as Sherri Squibbles. A joke about Sherri’s preferred music had me in stitches. There’s also minor roles filled out by Bill Hader, John Krasinski, Nathan Fillion, Aubrey Plaza, Alfred Molina, Bobby Moynihan. Quick question though – at what point did Pixar just start drafting in vocal talent from NBC’s sitcoms and variety shows?

Of course, we haven’t even begun to discuss Helen Mirren’s queenly, icy tones as Dean Hardscrabble. Mirren’s natural authority and outward appearance of suffering no fools seems to have found a way into the animation of her character. It’s a great design, made all the better by the marriage of her vocal performance and the animators working wonders with her. Monsters University is worth seeing for her grand dame theatrics alone.

Notice though that I haven’t spent a lot of time talking up the plot or many of the jokes. It’s not that it doesn’t have its moments – the Scare Games in particular has many set-pieces that are wildly imaginative and crazy. I’m highly fond of the librarian myself. It does have its moments of great humor; it even manages to have moments of great heart and character depth. But they don’t linger in the mind in the same way that Monsters, Inc. did, and continues to do. They’re too engulfed in the more generic sections of the plot to fully breathe.

But this being Pixar, the animation is stellar. An extended sequence by a lake in the human world had me wondering if they rendered that themselves, or if they just seamlessly merged in the characters to actual footage of a lake at midnight. While their stories have been suffering lately that doesn’t mean they aren’t still at the top of the line when it comes to pushing CG animation as far as it can go. Because for all their recent stumbles, with Monsters University, Pixar can still manage to prove why they’ve remained at the very top of the hill.

If there’s any incredibly iconic but difficult to adapt figure from the modern era, it’s probably Superman. Despite being at the forefront of comic book and super-heroic iconography, despite the vast number of radio programs, television shows, films, toys, video games, collectibles and general presence in the pop culture psyche, he’s still looked upon as something of a relic. A carbon-dated hero from the optimistic Eisenhower era, an antiquated hero who sees the world in black-and-white, as wholesome and Americana as apple pie and baseball, and it’s an unfair image, for he is a vastly more complicated and interesting hero than that.

There’s a core of sadness and isolation within Superman – the alien who walks among us. So it is with great joy that I can say, while imperfect, Man of Steel manages to bring out the human qualities and darker emotions bubbling beneath the surface of the character. He’s finally gotten a movie in the modern era which doesn't completely suck. It does suffer from many of the same problems that other comic book adaptations fall into, but there’s a good foundation to finally go off and explore the more unique and intergalactic villains in his rogues gallery.

Producer Christopher Nolan and director Zack Snyder don’t exactly seem like a matchmaker’s ideal pair, and to be honest, their styles are sometimes clashing against each other. During various sequences one can practically feel Snyder trying to let his penchant for slow-motion action sequences out to play while Nolan scolds him away from it. But more often than not, they seem to have a middle-ground to play in. And it kind of works, sometimes.

A lot of the heavily lifting in making this world believable falls upon the actors. And Snyder and Nolan have assembled a fantastic team. I was originally apprehensive over Michael Shannon being assigned the role of Zod, partially out of character fatigue and because Shannon doesn’t seem terribly bulky and large enough to knock around Cavill’s Superman, but Shannon invests the character with an unhinged, despotic quality that brings something fresh to Zod. I always had faith that Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane and Henry Cavill would nail their roles, and I was right. Costner and Lane bring a lot of heart, spunk, homespun charm and realistic parental anxiety to the Kents. Adams is perfect as Lois Lane, headstrong, spunky, smart and tough. As for Cavill, he’s long been my fan favorite dream choice for the role, and he fits the role as perfectly as Christian Bale inhabited Batman. By bringing in a pretty tony cast, the list of Oscar, Emmy and Tony nominees and winners is pretty astonishing, the filmmakers really helped us believe in this murkier, unformed world of Superman, even as the script frequently goes off the rails.

The problems occur when the things need to fall and/or blow-up real pretty like. The action sequences seem to go on for forever, occupying valuable space that could have been used to flesh out some of the peripheral characters or given us a stronger connection between Lois and Superman. Or, hell, they could have even given more time to Clark Kent, who is the real person unlike, for example, Batman in which Bruce Wayne is the created identity.

The action sequences display a tremendous amount of craft and the special effects are top notch, but they just drag on and on and on. The tremendous amount of destruction also brings up images of 9/11 New York and I’m not sure how I feel about any superhero property tapping into that imagery for so primal a reaction. It feels a little sleazy and unearned. After a while watching artificial versions of Superman and Zod punching each other through building after building while the music swells and the sound effects roar doesn’t hold all that much charm. Call me crazy, but I much prefer the scenes in which we follow Clark Kent traveling the world, discovering himself, his powers and his purpose. In other words, I prefer the film that Nolan was clearly trying to steer DC towards making.

Except Nolan was also trying to foster on many of the eccentricities and character-specifics of Batman onto Superman. I don't think Snyder's vision is what's best for adapting the character, and Nolan's clearly has major problems as well, so I propose a third way. There's plenty of interesting tidbits and ideas brought up, but they're quickly tossed aside in favor of watching Superman destroy buildings by having extended fights with the same three people, over and over and over again. There's a better middle ground to find between these two extremes, and that is where DC needs to mine for future Superman films.

This blanket process of "grim and gritty" for all comic book characters doesn't work. Not every single character fits neatly into that mold. Superman is a lighter, happier character, generally speaking. While I appreciated that they took the time to explore the more humane elements of the character in the beginning, the heavy-leaning on Jesus symbolism is a bit tone deaf. Superman is clearly a symbol of Moses, if one must look towards the Bible for symbolic allegories. But if I had to chose between this messy new franchise, and the nostalgia-tinted, immensely forgettable Superman Returns, I suppose I would chose this one. At least this one feels like there's more stories to explore within the assembled universe.