White Hat, Black Hat

THE INFORMANT!

Steven Soderbergh is an interesting filmmaker. Though I can't say he's one I particularly "follow" the way I do, say, the Coen Brothers, Aronofsky, or Nolan, I've seen a good deal of his filmography: sex, lies, and videotape, Kafka, The Limey, Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Ocean's Eleven (and probably one of the sequels too, I don't remember; I can't really tell them apart, honestly), Full Frontal, Solaris, Che. I don't actively seek him out, but I like most of what I've seen from him. His filmography is one that's hard to pin down; it seems all over the map not only in its subject matter, but more generally in a roughly even divide between the mainstream (not meant as a criticism) and the art-house. It seems strange to me that the director of sex, lies, and videotape, Solaris, and Che is the same as the director of Out of Sight, Erin Brockovich, and the Ocean's series. Though he can't exactly write his own meal ticket in Hollywood, I have a hard time believing it's just a matter of making multiplex fare in order to finance his more off-beat passion projects. Or maybe I'm completely wrong. I'll have to ask him the next time we hang out.

This isn't just an example of stream-of-consciousness blog-posting, the above paragraph does have a point. The point is that his most recent film, The Informant! (trailer), seems to have one foot in each of the two halves of Soderbergh's filmography. On the one hand, it's a general-release comedy with one of the biggest stars in Hollywood; on the other, it goes in some rather unexpected places and offers some interesting insights into the human condition.

The Informant! tells the true story—more or less—of Mark Whitacre (Matt Damon), a mild-mannered senior executive at the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland. (The film tells us that we've probably never heard of ADM, but of course I have, as a viewer since childhood of The NewsHour, whose corporate sponsor is none other than the "supermarket to the world.") For reasons that remain ambiguous even by the film's end, in 1992 he tells the FBI about his company's illegal price-fixing schemes with competitors overseas and spends years gathering and reporting information to bring his colleagues down. Eventually, however, the tangled webs Whitacre's woven while trying to play both sides of the fence begin tripping him up more and more catastrophically.

The film's got a great mixture of intelligence and a rather goofy sense of humor. Though Whitacre's the chief source of the humor, Damon plays him with enough humanity to keep him from being a cartoon simpleton; he's often ridiculous, but also too much of an everyman for us not to see real people we know (and maybe a little of ourselves) in him. We're privy to Whitacre's thoughts—really a series of largely irrelevant stream-of-consciousness non-sequiturs—thanks to a voiceover, one of the best uses of voiceover outside of Woody Allen's body of work. It's got a breezy, light-hearted tone, reinforced by a wonderful, whimsical score by Broadway and film composer Marvin Hamlisch (A Chorus Line, The Sting, Sophie's Choice); when Whitacre's voiceover mentions a Mexican restaurant, I could swear I heard the score go a little mariachi-esque for a second.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't say a few words about the cast. Wow. Scott "Quantum Leap" Bakula, Joel "The Soup" McHale, Tony "Buster Bluth" Hale, Melanie "sexy/heartbreaking stripper-dance in Away We Go (or, going further back, adolescent friendship with Kate Winslet ending in tragedy in Heavenly Creatures)" Lynskey, Paul F. "Mr. Show" Tompkins, Patton "Comedian of Comedy" Oswalt, Clancy "the Kurgan, Cpt. Hadley, Sgt. Zim, Kelvin Inman, really, take your pick" Brown, Tom "Biff Tannen" Wilson, Andrew "Eastbound and Down" Daly, and, last but not least, Tommy and Dick "the Smothers Brothers" Smothers. I think that speaks for itself.

— CORN GOES IN ONE END AND SPOILERS COME OUT THE OTHER —

Where The Informant! manages not just to be "Abbott and Costello Meet The Insider" is its examination of human psychology. Beneath the superficial layer of wholesome, middle-American, "awe shucks and golly gee" simplicity, Whitacre is a whirlwind of mixed motivations, slimy underhandedness, and self-deception of Shakespearean proportions. About halfway through, Whitacre admits to his FBI handlers that he's been embezzling millions of dollars from ADM through fraud, forgeries, and kickbacks; the film then largely shifts gears from ADM's wrongdoing to Whitacre's and its repercussions on the ADM case and Whitacre's life. His status as a government witness becomes compromised, and he becomes the subject of an investigation of his own.

This, of course, goes completely against Whitacre's own idealized conception of himself, according to which he's the good guy—0014, "twice as smart as 007"—battling the corporate thieves straight out of the Grisham and Crichton novels he mentions. He says at one point that there are "white hats" and "black hats" in the world, good guys and bad guys. This stark dichotomy is obviously belied by his own behavior, claiming to act solely out of a sense of decency while raking in ill-gotten gains and expecting to take over ADM once his colleagues are gone. We eventually see that telling lies comes just as naturally as telling the truth when it coincides with his flattering self-image, from arranging FBI stings to setting up off-shore accounts, falsely accusing an FBI agent of battery, and even telling people that he was an orphan (which he had heard made people more sympathetic). The almost childlike naïveté he projects disguises a savvy that no doubt largely accounts for his meteoric rise at ADM. (The way he deftly handles an unexpected crisis during a sting, when someone wants to move the meeting from the bugged suite to a larger one, by pretending to call the hotel front desk and casually carrying on half a conversation definitely raised a red flag for me that this guy wasn't what he seemed.)

Instead of just giving us a comedic version of the boilerplate whistleblower drama, Soderbergh crafted a film that examines the lies we tell others and, perhaps even more importantly, ourselves. Mark Whitacre may be an extreme example, but as I said above, the Whitacre type is quite recognizable. The fact that a pathological liar and guilt-free swindler rose to senior management in a respected "Fortune 500" company may be the film's most damning indictment of corporate culture, even more so than the ADM price-fixing around which it ostensibly centers.

Brother, can you spare a remake?

Oh, blog...did you miss me? I realize that I have not been supportive and giving you the attention you so richly deserve for all the you have done for me, but I swear to God I haven’t been seeing any other online authoring tools. I mean I was moving and starting work at a different place and preparing for the LSAT -- yes, yes I'll stop -- I know they're just excuses and you deserve better. I just want you to know that it’s not you; it’s me. And if you just take me back, I swear I’ll make it up to you this time. I can change -- really I can. And no, those colors don't make your pages look fat.

Well, now that is out of the way so I can get back to the less important stuff....

BRØDRE (aka BROTHERS). Now give me some sympathy in my analysis here, please, because I did watch this about a month ago on the train as I was making my move to Washington. I do want to get this written to talk about not just the movie itself, which I did find noteworthy, but also the idea of American remakes of foreign films. So I'm going to start with the movie (trailer) first and then rip on Tobey Maguire and American film.

This Danish movie follows one of the oldest subjects in film: war. Like many such movies, especially those post-Vietnam, this one looks and the psychological affects of warfare both on the people serving and those that are left at home. As the title implies, there are two siblings in this telling, but unmentioned there is the one woman who is just as significant to the story and completes what because an uneasy triangle of family emotions and tension. Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is the mature, elder brother who, as the movie commences, is preparing to be shipped off to Afghanistan and leave behind our female lead, his wife Sarah, who is played by the Danish actress Connie Nielsen. Interesting tidbit about her is that despite her background, she built her career in American movies such as Gladiator and Rushmore, with Brothers marking her Danish-language debut. The third major character is the flaky, younger brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) that grows closer to Sarah and her two daughters after Michael leaves. OK, so the trailer and everything about the movie I saw beforehand gives this plot point away, but it is a minor SPOILER ALERT, and if you don't want to know any more, skip to the end of the paragraph. Now that enough space should have passed for those not wanting to find anything out can leave, I will say that Jannik and Sarah become especially close as they both mourn Michael, who is incorrectly declared dead. This creates new complexity when Michael eventually returns home, especially with the raw wounds and possible PTSD (my diagnosis, not the film's) related to the events we see happen to him in Afghanistan. Giving away those events as well as how the story evolves would give away too much, but it is enough to say that everything becomes stretched toward the breaking point.

What I found worth writing about in this movie was the delicacy with which the director, Susanne Bier, handled her characters and situations that delve into much more dark, raw areas than we often see in film. Although war is not a new subject for film, she used a lot of the documentary-like methods used frequently in films of this generation to try and capture a realism of living those experiences. I don't necessarily mean the battle locations, but more the mundane, daily activities that one goes through as one tries to go one with a life that has been drastically altered by the absence of spouse or sibling. There are certain scenes in the movie that are longer than what one might expect and instead of cutting to the next shot, we often get a couple of seconds more of, say, Sarah's face that allows us to see not her instantaneous reaction, but how something settles into her visage. There is a lot of lingering -- mimicking, one might say, the way that Sarah's life is in a suspended state. About halfway through the movie there is a scene that I cannot describe in too much detail, but those who have or will see the movie likely know what I'm talking about when I say that one of the more dramatic shots goes on for an excruciatingly long period of time. It went on long enough for me to first think, "Gee, I think there should be a cut in here," and then eventually realize as it continued that by not cutting, the director was putting me in the head of the character and making it probably the most effective shot of the film. When it finally did cut, I found myself both mesmerized and horrified at the same time. Also, probably what the character felt.

I was also pleased to see the topic of Afghanistan -- a mission more closely tied to the United States than Europe but that has yet to yield a particularly memorable narrative film in this country. Perhaps that is why it has been remade as an American film and is being released this winter. Americans like a lot of the themes for war films brought up in this movie -- the idea of exploring the trauma at home hearkens back to Coming Home and the horror of war on combatants is, well, present in nearly every war film made since the 1970s. Having now seen this source material, it seems to me making an English-language movie 5 years later is a waste of time.

There was a time when remaking a foreign film made a lot of sense, at least from a financial standpoint, because a good plot was already in place and the state of foreign-film distribution was such that hardly anyone would have seen the original. But this movie was played in theaters on this continent and is easily available for rent with the diversified collection of services like Netflix. I do realize that just a few years ago Martin Scorsese won an Oscar for The Departed, which was a remake of a then four-year-old Hong Kong movie Mou gaan dou, known in the United States as Infernal Affairs. I do admit that case does work against my argument, but to a lesser extent because, having seen both movies, they are completely different film experiences. The general plot is the same but the style and character are reflect two vastly diverging approaches in the two tellings (and, I should say, they are both worth seeing). Having watched the trailer (see bottom) for the American remake of Brothers, it does not appear to be the case. The lines from the trailer mimic many of the lines from the movie and since the story is about a war that is still going on, I have a hard time seeing how the filmmakers will find something else to say about it. It looks like it will turn out to be a similar movie with the actors speaking in English instead. In defense of the movie I should note that it has some credentials that make it a more serious project than a simple Hollywoodization. The director is Irishman Jim Sheridan, who created such memorable films as My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father, In America and (as if that trilogy were not enough) the 50 Cent biopic Get Rich or Die Tryin'. With the aforementioned Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman, it shows some promise -- it just seems like a big ole waste of time. It's possible that with this team the movie might not be stripped of its quality and replaced by a weepy drama with Portman as the balling wife -- stripped of all her emotional scars and instead replaced by a teary housewife as American representation of women in movies often do. And since I did promise a complaint about Spider-man -- how about that he does not look noticeably older than Bubble Boy? Or that he looks just as small, if not smaller? The physical difference between the brothers I found to be a key element and when I see the two of them together it kind of ruins the dynamic.

It seems to me that too often, no matter who is involved, American remakes are known for taking what was a good foreign film and turning it into something bland. It seems that it would be quite difficult to make a good movie once, but to take the same idea and do it again without making it a completely unoriginal, literal translation would be even more difficult. Think Vanilla Sky, originally Abre Los Ojos, also with Penélope Cruz. It takes so much effort to make a movie and as you described in questioning whether Darren Aronofsky should remake RoboCop, I can't help but wonder if the talented people behind this movie should invest their time making something more worthwhile. There have been hardly any quality representations in narrative film of the two wars in which the country is now embroiled -- the first acknowledged success being The Hurt Locker, THIS YEAR -- that I would much rather see a creative team make another quality movie on the topic instead of rehashing one of the only good ones that has been done thus far. I would go so far as to say that film has failed thus far to capture the significance of the post-9/11 environment, which is at least as significant of a cultural element as the Vietnam War. But that could be a whole different post. This is just concluding that the topic of Afghanistan and modern war has not been so thoroughly explored that only opportunity is a remake of a foreign film.

So that does leave the question of whether I will see the new movie. Yes, I expect I will. If it is good, I will want to see what they have done with it and whether that causes me to reassess my judgment. If it is not good, well that just gives me something more to write about here.

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Trailer for the new movie be here...

Fifties, meet the Eighties. Eighties, Fifties.

THE THING

THE FLY

THE BLOB

And you thought film studios were remake-happy nowadays. For one reason or another, the 1980s saw a series of remakes of classic sci-fi/horror movies from the 1950s. These weren't just any remakes, however, but works of cinema that not only stand on their own two feet but in many respects outdo the originals. Sometimes they follow the original pretty closely (The Blob), sometimes they use the original as little more than a jumping-off point (The Thing, The Fly), but in all three cases we're treated to entertaining, shocking, expertly crafted science-fiction filmmaking of the highest level.

(OK, caveat time. I write this post with a bit of trepidation, since the only one of the '50s originals I've actually seen is The Fly, and that was only once many, many years ago. That said, I don't intend to talk that much about the originals anyway, since the post's ostensible '80s-remake-of-'50s-scifi-classic theme is actually little more than an excuse to talk about three awesome '80s sci-fi/horror movies. The fact that they're all based on '50s originals doesn't really affect what I think of them, it just helps me to lump them together. Whew, I'm glad I got that confession off my chest.)

— SPOILERS . . . FROM ANOTHER WORLD! —

The Thing (trailer), directed by the great John Carpenter and released on June 25, 1982—the very same day as another high-water mark in cinematic science fiction, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner—is loosely based on 1951's The Thing from Another World (trailer), directed by Howard Hawks (but credited to Charles Nyby), itself based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John Campbell. (In a counter-example to the general trend of adaptation decay, Carpenter's film is more faithful to the novella than Hawks's.) In Carpenter's film, a sleepy American outpost in Antarctica becomes the scene of a strange attempt by Norwegians from a neighboring outpost to kill a sled dog. The Norwegians are killed and the dog taken in by the Americans, but they soon learn that the dog is actually an alien, discovered in the ice by the unfortunate Norwegians, that can copy and assimilate other organisms, including humans. Isolated and afraid, they try to figure out who on their small crew is still human and who is already a "thing" bent on assimilating the rest.

Simply put, this is one of my favorite movies ever. First off, it's got a ridiculous cast, with Kurt Russell (fresh from working with Carpenter on Escape from New York), Keith David (who would go on to work with Carpenter on They Live and narrate those Navy recruitment ads—"Accelerate your life!"), Wilford Brimley (yes, that Wilford Brimley!), and Thomas Waites (who got run over by a subway train in The Warriors), among others. Carpenter makes this sausage-fest interesting by imbuing it with so much suspense and claustrophobic dread that you're almost afraid to move; he's greatly assisted in this by a simple, ominous score by the master himself, Ennio Morricone.

As great as so many elements in this film are, the real star of The Thing is the special effects. The 1980s were a golden age of practical effects, when the technology and skills were at their most advanced but before computer-generated effects started taking over in the 1990s. (Digression/rant: The problem with CG effects, even when done impeccably well, is that they take the wonder out of special effects. With a few taps on a keyboard you can make literally anything imaginable. Practical effects, which actually have to exist in three-dimensional space and obey the laws of physics, require a staggering—indeed, inspiring—amount of skill, ingenuity, and dumb luck to pull off. If done well, the payoff is special effects that not only look far more real than any CG effect—because they are real—but make the audience's jaws drop as they wonder, "How'd they manage to do that?" Though we've seen some filmmakers reject the Lucasian excesses of CG effects and embrace practical effects—notably del Toro in Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, and Hellboy 2—we still have a long way to go before we'll see practical effects return to their '80s glory. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.) Though all three of these films—and many others from the era; An American Werewolf in London (example) and Videodrome (example) come to mind—have some fantastic practical effects, The Thing is simply head and shoulders above the rest. From the dog-thing's transformation in the kennel to the defibrillator scene (doesn't Palmer (David Clennon) just sum up the situation perfectly?) to Blair-thing's stretching apart Garry's face at the end, The Thing just goes from triumph to triumph effects-wise. This is real "movie magic" (even if it feels less "magical" than "stomach-turning"). The combination of astonishing special effects, a great cast, an intriguing story, palpable atmosphere, and brilliant execution on Carpenter's part makes The Thing an unforgettable film.

The 1986 remake of The Fly (trailer) has the same basic premise as the 1958 original (trailer)—a scientist invents a teleportation machine but teleports himself with a fly in the machine with him, causing him to turn into a half-man, half-fly mutant—but David Cronenberg departed from the original significantly, in both story and tone. The original is told in flashbacks, as a police inspector tries to get to the bottom of why the scientist's wife killed him. In the end, we find out that the scientist's head and arm turned into those of the fly, and the fly's turned into those of the scientist—leading to this particularly disturbing classic climactic scene. Cronenberg's film, on the other hand, is structurally more straightforward, simply telling the story of Seth Brundle's last weeks chronologically. Wasting no time, the film begins when Seth (Jeff Goldblum) invites journalist Ronnie (Geena Davis) back to his home/lab to show her his teleportation pods (no, that's not just his pickup line); they become lovers while he continues to work the kinks out of his invention, but soon he follows in his 1958 predecessor's footsteps and tests it on himself without checking for insect interlopers first. Unlike the switcheroo scenario in the original, Seth and the fly have their genetic material fused into one being, initially simply Seth with greater strength and reflexes but eventually mutating into an increasingly fly-like state, becoming "Brundlefly."

Structurally the film is very simple: three characters (Seth, Ronnie, and Ronnie's scuzzy editor Stathis (John Getz)), begins with Seth and Ronnie's first meeting, ends with his death. Unlike the original, there's no mystery; we see everything that happens to Brundle over the course of his mutation (often in gruesome detail). The story doesn't derive its power from some classic sci-fi "big reveal" but from witnessing what happens to Seth as he physically, and eventually psychologically, loses his humanity. The film is a tragedy of the Classical sort, in which the protagonist is brought to ruin by his own faults and excesses, in Seth's case a pride and ambition on display from the very first scene. What's so heartbreaking is that he never fully loses his humanity; even at the very end we can still see a man in there, a twisted remnant of the brilliant, handsome, charming man we saw at the beginning. The intimacy of the story, Cronenberg's expert blending of the dramatic and sci-fi/horror elements, Howard Shore's terrific score, and the realistic immediacy with which the tragic consequences of Seth's hubris are depicted (i.e., the graphic body horror) make The Fly a powerful experience, both visually and emotionally.

The Fly is another '80s high-water mark in practical effects, in this case primarily the makeup and costume work for Seth Brundle. David Cronenberg is the King of Body Horror; this is displayed not only in his earlier films like The Fly, Videodrome, Scanners, Naked Lunch, and eXistenZ, with their blurring of the line between machine and body (bodies used as machines, machines united with bodies, one transforming into the other, the machine-like manipulation of bodies, etc.), but also in his more recent, somewhat more mainstream films like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, with their often unflinchingly graphic depictions of violence. The Fly is the cornerstone of Cronenberg's filmography in this regard, with the entire film centering on the grotesque transformations the protagonist undergoes: the inside-out baboon, the arm-wrestling match in the bar, the deterioration of Seth's body, his climactic final transformation into Brundlefly. Considering the mutation's centrality to the story, the film simply wouldn't work if the effects weren't convincing; the emotional power that The Fly conveys is therefore a real testament to the special-effects craftsmanship on display.

One final note on The Fly: Cronenberg and Oscar-winning effects artist Chris Walas should've at least gotten a "special thanks" credit in District 9, considering how indebted that film was to The Fly, from the progressive mutation to finger nails peeling off to the sympathetic protagonist's bewildered, terrified reaction to what's happening to him. District 9 was great, but in a lot of respects it was standing on the shoulders of giants.

Finally, The Blob (trailer). Honestly, this 1988 remake of the 1958 original (trailer) starring Steve McQueen isn't as good as the other films discussed in this post, and I haven't seen it in several years. It may not have the suspense of The Thing or the pathos of The Fly, but it's still a solid movie with generally decent special effects—especially when the Blob is dissolving some hapless earthling. It's also got a secret weapon: Kevin Dillon. That's right, Johnny Drama himself has a starring role in this flick! If that's not enough to convince you you're in the presence of quality cinema, it's got some great, gruesome kills—the guy trying to cop a feel on his date (here, starting at about 1:20) is one for the history books—including a bona-fide kid kill (sorry, I'm not linking to that, you'll just have to watch the movie). This is a movie that doesn't make you think or feel too much; it just offers up an hour and a half of slimy, gelatinous entertainment full of unsuspecting townsfolk and their awesomely disgusting demises. What more could you ask for from a movie about a giant, man-eating wad of mucus? (The answer is "not that much," considering it's not exactly a very compelling antagonist.)

— — —

Though technically a couple years too early, the 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (trailer) would be interesting to compare to the 1956 original (trailer), with their different takes on a common theme of paranoia and social/political anxiety—especially since I've actually seen the original. But that'll have to wait for another post.

"That's one fast ninja!"

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA

This post won't really be a coherent examination of this movie (trailer), or even a review, but just a record of some of some of the thoughts going through my head as I watched it yesterday afternoon. Normally I wouldn't post on a movie without making a bit more of an effort to give what I was writing a bit more structure and reflection, but in this case it seems like that would go directly against G.I. Joe's whole ethos. I'm giving this movie exactly as much thought as it gave me.

— SPOILERS (assuming you actually care about the plot, which you shouldn't) —

So the bad guys have to "weaponize" the nano-warheads to use them. Correct me if I'm wrong—I'm no warheads expert or anything (or imaginary-nano-weaponry expert, for that matter)—but doesn't "weaponize" mean turning something that isn't a weapon into a weapon? For example, uranium normally isn't weapons-grade and has to be weaponized through enrichment (i.e., what we keep worrying about Iran and North Korea doing). So how do you "weaponize" a warhead, which is obviously already a weapon? All they were doing was activating the warheads. It's like saying that you're "weaponizing" a gun by turning the safety off.

Besides the fact that it's just stupid that Destro's jet fighters have their voice-command systems set to a rather obscure language—did he assume that his secret underwater Arctic base would be infiltrated and his fighters stolen?—they refer to the language as "Celtic" and "Scottish," neither of which is actually a language. Celtic is a family of several different languages; it would be as if the voice controls were set to "Slavic" or "Romance." And "Scottish" could theoretically refer to Gaelic (the Celtic language of Scotland), Scots (the English dialect traditionally spoken in Scotland; see Robert Burns's poetry for examples), or simply standard English spoken with a Scottish accent. They mean Gaelic, but that doesn't make much sense, since Gaelic, though a "national" language with some historical/romantic appeal, is only spoken by about one percent of the population in Scotland; it would be like if Destro were Mexican and he designed all his fighters' voice commands only to respond to Aztec. Baffling.

Why does the polar icecap sink when Cobra Commander (or the Doctor, or Rex, or whatever name he goes by) blows it up? Are the makers of this movie actually unaware that ice floats in water? Again, baffling.

How did Destro manage to burn his face during the final battle? Was he holding the gun backwards or something?

The final submarine battle is basically the Death Star assaults from Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, with Destro's base as the Death Star, the Joes' mini-subs (or "Sharks"—when General Hawk ordered "Deploy the Sharks!" I was really hoping they'd send out a bunch of actual, trained sharks to attack the bad guys; what a disappointment) as X-Wings, and the enemy mini-subs as TIE Fighters. Not content just to rip off the original trilogy, the final fight between Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow was remarkably similar to the final fight between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul from The Phantom Menace, down to the bad guy's using a double-bladed weapon and falling into a pit when he's killed (or is he?). And Destro ripped off Ozymandias's plan from Watchmen of destroying cities to frighten the world into unity.

Speaking of this movie's "inspirations," there were so many flashbacks I couldn't help but think I was watching the dumbest episode of Lost ever. (Scarlett: "The warhead's re-entered the lower atmosphere! Now you can't shoot it down!" Ripcord: "Don't tell me what I can't do!")

And this summer's movies have been very educational. Everything I know about neuroscience I learned from G.I. Joe—you can retrieve memories from a dead brain by sticking special knitting needles into it—and Wolverine—you can induce amnesia in someone by shooting him point-blank in the head.

Whew, I'm glad I got all that off my chest. All that said, I had a pretty good time watching G.I. Joe. Not only is it in the running for the funniest movie of the summer—seriously, The Hangover had better watch its back—but it managed to be far more entertaining overall than Transformers 2 despite being at least as stupid. Michael Bay, take notes: One, don't turn off the action in the middle of the movie to devote thirty or forty minutes straight to boring, convoluted exposition and wild-goose chases; two, integrate the comic relief into the action rather than just devoting whole scenes to tedious, unfunny attempts at humor (e.g., Shia's mom and the pot brownies); three, there's a difference between kid-oriented (e.g., just about everything in G.I. Joe) and groan-inducingly juvenile (e.g., the robo-balls in Transformers 2); four, a movie of this kind has worn out its welcome by the time it passes the two-hour mark (you can't complain that I have a short attention span when all you're showing me is eye candy); five, actually giving your characters somewhat differing appearances and attributes is a good idea. That's not to say that G.I. Joe is perfect even by its own low standards—Channing Tatum was pretty bland, I think the final battle went on a little too long, and it would've been nice to see the Accelerator Suits do a bit more than just running around—but after Transformers 2 it was nice to be reminded that mindless fun can actually be, you know, fun.

If there's a single image that perfectly captures the spirit of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, it's this (courtesy of the great Bill Watterson):