Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron officially kicks off the summer movie season.  Box office records for Marvel's eleventh entry to its venerable cinematic universe are insured.  After all, the Marvel brand is such a finely oiled, storm-weathered machine that it's nearly irrelevant to put much serious thought or intellectual weight over whether or not the movies themselves are good or bad.  Analysis is besides the point-- the approval ratings and billion dollar global business dictates Hollywood investments rather than artfulness, originality and aesthetic value.  This may sound horribly cynical-- the corporatist, overstuffed Age of Ultron can't not be iced with a little cynicism-- but that's certainly not meant to imply that there aren't pleasures to be found in Joss Whedon's second go as captain of the ship.  Nor is it meant to imply that there shouldn't be a place in the cinematic marketplace for the adventures of this rag-tag group of superhero misfits-- Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner)-- learning how to form a team.  There's value in that, just as there is in Richard Linklater's effortlessly insightful 18-year spanning Before-trilogy.  I just wish slightly more people flocked to the latter and slightly less blathered endlessly at the former.

Hiring Whedon was Marvel's smartest move.  When he came aboard to write and direct the first Avengers, the Marvel universe was still an unsteady, risky venture.  Yet with Whedon's verve as a writer and willingness to work within the iron-clad Marvel infrastructure as a director, it was clear way before the iconic 360 money shot near the end of the 2012 film that franchise/brand was going to take over the world (whilst simultaneously showing the destruction of it in every movie).  Whedon already established on the great television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer a way to deconstruct, mold and sharpen genre pieces by attaching humanity, levity and relatable anguish while still respecting and holding true its mythology.  The first Avengers film was hardly a work of art but it was zesty and chock full of small, human-sized moments to savor on thanks to Whedon's sharp one-liners and gift with performers.  Avengers: Age of Ultron at times feels like a heated divide between Whedon's untethered imagination and Marvel's eternal task to retain the status quo.  Which again, isn't to say the movie is altogether bad (devotees will probably be happy, agnostics may continue to shrug), but perhaps marks a blessing that Whedon is handing directorial duties moving forward.

Lucy

The first ten minutes of Lucy, Luc Besson's absolutely berserk new film, will likely reveal your patience for this insane, fever dream mash-up of metaphysical blather and grand spectacle.  We meet American party girl Lucy (Scarlett Johansson), a blonde tart studying abroad in Taipei, and she's being courted (and then some) to courier a briefcase of unknown contents by her sketchy beau-of-the-week.  She does so, delivering this package to the unrepentantly evil Mr. Jang (Min-sik Choi, the original Oldboy.)  For an action movie it seems like a fairly standard set-up, like a generic variant of Taken (another Besson property.)  To no surprise, the briefcase contains drugs and Lucy, against her will, becomes a mule carrying the mysterious CPH4, which has been sewn into her abdomen.  The drug leaks and Lucy turns into a god-like creature with the ability to use more than 10% of her brain capacity.  She literary becomes the girl with kaleidoscope eyes.  With me so far?

But there's stranger things afoot.  For starters, Besson's cuts the first sequence with nature footage of wildlife animals luring and attacking their prey.  What is this movie?  When Lucy is offered cash, we cut to a shot of mouse nearing its trap.  Lucy never had a chance from the start, but Lucy is something else entirely-- a nutty exercise in style, one that abandons its generic action film traits nearly as quickly as it establishes them, unleashing a beast of movie, one that if isn't exactly smart, is certainly alluring in its confidence.  Maddening and mined with pseudo-science that might make Neil deGrasse Tyson's head explode, Lucy is strangely exhilarating and nearly unfathomably weird.  Besson throws imagery and madcap violence with such reckless abandon; he's genre bursting to such a heightened degree that Lucy plays like The Tree of Life meets Looney Tunes.

César Award Winners

PICTURE: Me, Myself and Mum (Les Garçons et Guillaume, Á Table!)
DIRECTOR: Roman Polanski, Venus In Fur
ACTOR: Guillaume Gallienne, Me, Myself and Mum
ACTRESS: Sandrine Kiberlain, Nine Month Stretch
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Niels Arestrup, Quai d'Orsay
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Adéle Haenel, Suzanne
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Nine Month Stretch- Albert Dupontel
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Me, Myself and Mum
FOREIGN FILM: The Broken Circle Breakdown
DOCUMENTARY: On the Way to School
ANIMATED FEATURE: Loulou L'Incroyable Secret
DEBUT FEATURE: Me, Myself and Mum
CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Young and Prodigious Mr. Spivet- Thomas Hardmeier
ART DIRECTION: Mood Indigo- Stéphane Rozenbaum
COSTUME DESIGN: Renoir- Pascaline Chavanne
ORIGINAL SCORE: Michael Kohlhaas- Martin Wheeler
EDITING: Me, Myself and Mum- Valérie Deseine
SOUND: Michael Kohlhass
SHORT FILM: Just Before Losing You
ANIMATED SHORT FILM: Mademoiselle Kiki et Les Montparnos

The French equivalent of the Academy Awards have announced and if U.S. audiences haven't heard of any these films, don't fret-- none of the top prize winners have really had widespread American releases and none of these films really have much of a way of factoring into the Oscars this Sunday.  The novelty of Roman Polanski being named Best Director for Venus Is Fur (which premiered at Cannes last year, but hasn't had a stateside release yet) is probably the biggest story.  Outside of the that Foreign Film Oscar contender The Broken Circle Breakdown won as did AMPAS-approved short film Just Before Losing You (which is incredible and an absolutely must see as an aside.)

France's hot newcomers.

MALE NEWCOMER: Pierre Deladonchamps, Stranger By the Lake
FEMALE NEWCOMER: Adéle Exarchopoulos, Blue Is the Warmest Color

The more interesting César choices (or at least choices made for films that have a bit of an exposure in the United States, to varying degrees) came in their breakthrough acting categories where a pair of fine (and very naked-- physically and emotionally) performances won.  There's an interesting dichotomy in honoring Deladonchamps and Exarchopoulos, both performers broke through in two separate, yet equally controversial queer titles that have gotten film critics and cinephiles all hot and bothered since they both premiered at last years Cannes Film Festival.  Stranger By the Lake is a gripping, beautifully filmed and distilled study of behaviors at a bucolic gay cruising site-- it's a slow burner of a film-- one that likely features a record number of shots of male full frontal for a legit movie-- until it morphs into a creepy, Hitchcockian thriller.  It's a beautifully terse film...I've been meaning to do a proper write-up on it (let me know if there's interest in that.)  Blue Is the Warmest Color, on the other hand is the buzzier title and the 2013 Palme D'Or winner. 

HONORARY CÉSAR: Scarlett Johansson

Hollywood made one big impression at the Césars with Johansson and her great recent movie revival (Her, Don Jon, the upcoming Under the Skin) receiving an honorary prize.  She seems a bit young for this type of thing, but hell, the Oscars aren't embracing her talents, so why not?

Detroit Film Critics Awards

PICTURE: Her
DIRECTOR: Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity
ACTOR: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club
ACTRESS: Brie Larson, Short Term 12
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Scarlett Johansson, Her
SCREENPLAY: Her- Spike Jonze
DOCUMENTARY: Stories We Tell
ENSEMBLE CAST: American Hustle
BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE: Brie Larson, Short Term 12

Scarlett Johansson's "Samantha" in Her.

Well, someone bit.  Correction-- a second someone.  Scarlett Johansson's voice only performance in Spike Jonze's Her has been critically lauded ever since the film premiered as the closing at the New York Film Festival circling the issue over whether a non-traditional performance gain traction in the Oscar race, yet again.  Johansson, who was deemed ineligible by the Hollywood Foreign Press, and really has no chance of a history-making Oscar nomination.  The Detroit Film Critics as well as the Rome Film Festival have swung at the bat for ScarJo however.  Not too shabby all considering.