Brad's Take: Snow White & the Huntsman - ***1/2

I walked into Snow White & the Huntsman with the honest thought that there is no reason for it to be good... The second re-imagining of Snow White in as many months, this time as a big-budget, epic action/adventure spectacle? Pshaw. Perhaps it was just the suffocating air-headedness of this season's summer offering thus far draining my optimism and conditioning me to expect to just not give a damn about what I'm watching, because not only was this new Snow White the first movie of the summer that has kept me from dozing off for a cool five minutes, but it also seemed surprisingly fresh and original at times.

And why wouldn't an adventurous take on Snow White be good? While I'm not familiar with the actual fairy tale, I have seen the Disney film, and anyone who's truly honest will admit that something needed to be done differently than it was in that overrated albeit gorgeously animated classic. In this incarnation we see the dark side of Charlize Theron in a brilliantly-conceived performance as Ravenna, who seduces her way into marrying the king of an unnamed land, killing him, and locking his daughter, Snow White (a sometimes bland, sometimes rousing Kristen Stewart), away for years, while she steals the youth of the land's maidens. Snow White's number comes up when Ravenna discovers that Snow's heart will grant her eternal youth, and after Snow escapes into the dark woods, Ravenna coerces The Huntsman, a grieving drunkard of a widower (played with the humor and gentle masculinity that I've come to appreciate from Chris Hemsworth) into bringing Snow back alive.

It's a rather simple premise, but I find myself abundantly willing to continue laying it all out, but a good movie is not about the what, but about the how, and Snow White is, for better or worse, pleasingly fundamental. Director Rupert Sanders, perhaps thanks to clear-cut fairy tale conventions, gives us instantly understandable characters whose motivations are never ambiguous, yet lets each of his actors add touches that transform dangerously stock characters into real people... who happen to live in a fantasy world where magic exists. Sanders makes us care about what happens to these people, even though we essentially already know, something that seems to be a difficulty among recent action spectacles. He takes the time to introduce us to this world and its narrative, before slinging the giant trolls and mischievously hostile dwarfs upon us, and mercifully keeps the CGI to a minimum, using it only when necessary, while most of the time focusing on actual sets and props, and flesh-and-blood people.

Most impressive of all, Sanders manages to make this large-scale epic feel somewhat low-key and personal, bathing his characters in seemingly natural light and using a lot of effective handheld camera-work to draw us in. Visually, it's absolutely hypnotic. While generally solid all-around, Snow White is certainly at its best when carving its own unique way through the material. It's handling of the dwarfs is inspired, to say the least. I'm not sure how the filmmakers pulled it off, but they cast half a dozen of the best character actors to play them, and somehow made them look absolutely believable at half their actual height. I spent the second half the film in awe of whatever sorcery resulted in Ian McShane and Toby Jones appearing to be three-feet tall and still be able to carry dramatic weight.

Banal narration in the prologue aside, even the moments Snow White feels boxed in by its limiting conventions are handled with subtle grace. Surprised to find myself so involved in the film two-thirds of the way through, I started to cringe when anticipating how the mythical true love's kiss that revives Snow White after biting the poisoned apple would be handled, only to be soothed by its tenderness and sincerity. The scene is followed immediately by another potentially cringeworthy call to arms, by Snow White herself, that blindsided me into a rousing sympathy for the cause.

Though somewhat standard at times, Snow White & the Huntsman elects for smaller, more emotionally engaging and perceptually intriguing moments, rather than never-ending, CGI-filled, mindlessly droning action sequences, and it's all the better for it. A technical wonder with occasional short periods of narrative dullness, it's quite memorable, if not downright extraordinary.

Chad's Take: "Snow White and the Huntsman" - 2.5 Stars

Snow White and the Huntsman  is a complete re-imagining of the classic German fairy tale. While this latest adaptation contains dark imagery aimed at adults, it's still the same fairy tale you've always known, right down to the Seven Dwarfs. This may make some of the purists happy, but it will unfortunately leave many moviegoers wanting a whole lot more.

Yes, in this version of the film there are battles between armies and some vicious fantastical monsters; however, these elements do very little in terms of adding something new to the same old story. Instead these scenes feel like additions made only to meet the audience's fantasy film expectations.

The epic battles (which don't seem all that epic) feel like an aside to the fairy tale and don't mesh very well into the story. We're told that Snow White is supposed to lead an army against the Evil Queen and restore her father's kingdom, but the reasons behind Snow White's charisma aren't properly articulated and are never well examined.

Entry 2: RE: "Avengers" - No Assembly Required

Posted by: Bradley Redder

Well to start, I too find no basis for saying that Whedon "claims the characters as his own," because I never said that, nor did I think it. And that is exactly the problem... He does nothing with them that we haven't seen before, aside from giving Tony Stark a new way to put on and take off his Iron Man suit. You say that each actor brings to the screen the character they developed in previous films, and Whedon's film simply brings them together; is that all you wanted from this film? Is that the "brainy" superhero film that everybody seems to be trumping this up to be? Snooze. I'd rather just buy the action figures from the separate films and put together the toy playsets to create my own world-saving scenarios.

I say these characters need an arc. If not individually, then at least as a group. The first act serves as a refresher into who that characters are, a very long time to spend on something you assume the audience is already familiar with, which is why I say this is an awkward experience. The Avengers is the first of its kind... How much can you assume people will know about these characters? And at the same time, given how much the film isn't actually about them individually, is using the first act to re-establish them one by one really an efficient way to open a two and a half hour film? I don't necessarily blame Whedon for not being able to handle it gracefully, but I can't just give him a pass on it, either, simply because there is no precedent informing how such a venture should be approached.

I'll also stand by my claim that Whedon uses humor as his instant character developer. Luckily a lot of the jokes are actually funny, or else this would go from bothersome to downright infuriating, but in lieu of giving these characters anything to actually do or figure out about themselves, he simply turns them into the Brat Pack and gives them a bunch of funny dialogue to gloss over how shallow they actually appear in this film. With the exception of Tony Stark, who is the perfect combination of wit and energy that Whedon seems to wish all of his characters could be, do you think you could come up with an adjective to describe any of these characters as portrayed in this film? I know they've been developed in other films, but do they actually embody what was conveyed in those films? (And if you say Bruce Banner is always angry I'm going to dropkick you in the face the next time I see you.) It looked to me like he was just trying to write six Tony Starks, giving all of the superheroes impeccable comedic timing, rather than something to really say, or even stand for. But more on the humor in another post.

So if this was really just bringing everyone together as you say, I still need something more. Though they do come together in the end, the group doesn't really grow in any way... They're pretty much the same going out as they were coming in. They bicker and fight each other along the way, which was very dull, and then are brought together by what was probably the cheapest, most cynical moment I've seen in a film this year (more on this, also, in another post), but it doesn't reflect any actual shift in perspective.

As for the Chitauri... Yes, I found them to be that silly. I wish I could find a picture from the sequence in which Loki does a mind-meld transportation to the Chitauri kingdom, so that I could put a picture of the remarkably similar sequences of The Fallen from Transformers 2, and to show how closely the character design and outfits resemble Power Rangers villains. I Googled them, and yes, they do look very similar. In the end, the army of Chitauri is a little bit different, but after that ridiculous introduction to them, there was no way I was ever going to take them seriously. Also, the very concept of this film, bringing together six distinct heroes into one ultimate fighting machine... Is it not another parallel to Power Rangers? Is the shot in which we finally see the Avengers assembled not essentially the same thing as the Rangers forming into the Megazord? Perhaps Joss Whedon is more firmly rooted in television than I thought. And perhaps you could elaborate on that "distinct visual style" you were talking about too, because all I saw was blah, meh, and so what.

Brad's Take: The Avengers - **

Well after waiting four years and watching five feature-length trailers, The Avengers lands with a thud not unlike Thor's hammer hitting the ground. Okay, it's not quite that bad, but it's not all that good, either. And like Thor without his hammer, it just doesn't hit with the power it has the potential to. At two and a half hours, half-cocked just doesn't cut it, especially when much of the most impressive set-piece looks as though it was cobbled together with unused footage from Transformers 3, with an extra-terrestrial menace flying in through a sky-portal opening from another world and attacking a metropolitan area.

The Avengers was directed by Joss Whedon, who is most known for his television work as creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, and at times it feels like he never left TV behind. It almost feels small, though it's smallness on a very grand scale. That's not a thought I initially had walking out of the theater, given that it ends with a forty minute action sequence that is for the most part well-done, despite the comparisons to Transformers 3. But thinking back on it, there really isn't much there. The bulk of it takes place on a flying aircraft carrier which, aside from the awesome ridiculousness it provides at first sight, is actually pretty bland on the inside. Every room on the ship is either incredibly bright or incredibly dark, and not in a stylistic, moody way. It even comes complete with a command center stocked with faceless young people in one-piece uniforms who monitor a bunch of graphs and stuff on fancy touch-screens... What I wouldn't give to never have to see another one of these in a movie again.

And the writing reflects this feeling of smallness. It's plot is about as loose as it gets... S.H.I.E.L.D., the agency controlled by Nick Fury, who will assemble the Avengers, possesses an energy cube that can open a portal to another world. The film opens as Loki, the brother of and villain from Thor comes through it to Earth, steals it, and intends to use it to transport an alien race that will destroy the planet for some reason that, like the alien race itself, is never explored in any way. That's it. The rest is the heroes on the ship trying to track Loki and the cube down. A loose plot is acceptable, but it also fails to give any of the characters a story arc, barely even giving one to the group as a whole. They spend the middle of the movie not getting along; two of the four action set-pieces involve the heroes fighting each other. It feels as though these pieces were tacked on because Whedon and co. had a lot of extra money lying around and had to quickly come up with a way to spend it, as do some other unnecessarily show-offy moments. And if we've learned anything from previous Marvel films, it's that good guys fighting good guys is not at all interesting. There are no stakes involved; we know nothing will come of it. Watching these sequences is like sifting through all of the Bit-O-Honeys and Mary Janes in your Halloween haul while looking for the Snickers and Kit-Kats. The team doesn't actually assemble until the end of the film, and only after an almost offensively cynical turn of plot that I won't reveal.

It's a strange experience to watch The Avengers. It's sort of the first of its kind, being at once the first film in its series and also a pseudo-sequel to several others, and I wasn't sure exactly how to take it, nor am I sure Whedon knew exactly how to navigate it. After a cheap opening action sequence, Whedon spends the first act refreshing us on all of the characters, even though we've seen half of them as recently as nine months ago. Though it's a mostly solid forty minutes, it doesn't really tell us much that we don't know already, and that's my biggest issue with this film... Either through an inherent limitation in its concept or lack of imagination, it builds nothing of its own. Whedon wants these characters to be his, to belong to his film, yet he doesn't develop them in any way, instead relying on what five other films have done, and using funny dialogue as an instant character developer. Worst of all: he misses the opportunity to show us anything at all about Hawkeye and Black Widow, the two non-super heroes belonging to the Avengers who have what I am estimating to be a combined eleven minutes of screen time in the films leading to this one. Beyond the assumption I made based on his name and the bow-and-arrows he carries, I knew nothing of Hawkeye going into this film, and coming out of it I still know nothing. I can offer no adjective, no description of his character outside of saying he is a good shot (and even that is not always accurate).

As much of it as I found disagreeable, The Avengers is far from unbearable. Tom Hiddleston as Loki is nothing short of brilliant. In the few scenes in which he really gets to come out and play, he is fantastic, a perfect villainous turn... menacing enough to hate the character, but entertaining enough to love that he is in the film. Unfortunately he gets a little lost in the shuffle throughout the third act's nonstop action and his philosophical reasoning for his actions, that he is trying to free people of the burden of freedom, is left undeveloped. And Whedon is able to inject humor into almost any scene, and his writing style is perfectly suited to Robert Downey Jr.'s cocky, fast-talking Tony Stark. In the stretches when it does take off, The Avengers can be very fun, if you just let the action and humor wash over you without really thinking about it too closely. It is pretty entertaining to watch six characters show off their respective unique powers and talents in a large scale battle with aliens... If only the whole movie could have delivered this.

Whedon's humor keeps the film's tone light, though a little too light for my taste. I find myself surprised to say that most of the jokes land, but some of them in very awkward places. Whedon co-wrote The Cabin in the Woods, which I felt suffered from its abundance of wit, and The Avengers is no different, with the humor sometimes stumbling over itself in an attempt to build on a joke, and always blocking any kind of tension or legitimate sense of danger from developing. It certainly doesn't help that the villainous alien race looks like it was inspired by discarded Power Rangers concept art, but even if I could take them seriously, Whedon never lets me think for a second that they are a worthy opponent to his Avengers, and two and a half hours is a long time to spend stomping on ants.