FILM REVIEW OF "WONDER WOMAN" (2017)

The Adam West & Burt Ward “Batman” (1966) movie qualified as the first costume-clad crime fighter epic of the modern era.  Although women have figured prominently in all superhero sagas, DC Comics’ latest superhero origins extravaganza “Wonder Woman” (*** OUT OF ****) marks only the fifth time a woman has been cast as the title character in a blockbuster actioneer.  Earlier entries included “Supergirl” (1984) with Helen Slater; “Tank Girl” (1995) with Lori Petty; “Catwoman” (2004) with Halle Berry; and “Elektra” (2005) with Jennifer Garner.  Unfortunately, these four films failed to recoup their respective budgets at the box office.  (Before in the 1970s, Cathy Lee Crosby and Lynda Carter broke through the TV barrier and portrayed William Moulton Marston’s comic book creation Wonder Woman.  Crosby made one television feature, while Carter cavorted about for three seasons in a starry, patriotic costume with lots of cleavage. For the record, the Wonder Woman character made her DC Comics debut in their All-Star Comics in December 1941, and she fought Hitler’s Third Reich.)  Anyway, “Wonder Woman” is the only superhero movie about a heroine that can be classified as both a smashing critical and commercial success.  At last, little girls and feminists alike have a larger-than-life heroine as a role model that they can applaud in the eternal struggle against evil.  

Meantime, Warner Brothers should have released “Wonder Woman” before “Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice.”  The earlier blockbuster introduced audiences to the iconic Amazon warrior Princess Diana (Israel model Gal Gadot) with her incandescent Lasso of Truth and her ritualistic sword--something like King Arthur’s Excalibur--who came to the rescue in the darkest hour of need to vanquish Lex Luthor’s genetically mutated monster Doomsday.  Sadly, Wonder Woman tangles with an adversary far less frightening than Doomsday in “Monster” director Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman.”  Instead, she clashes with Zeus’ son--the wicked God of War Ares--and triumphs over the dastard.  Primarily, “Wonder Woman” is a movie told in flashback about the formative years of the heroine’s life and the photograph taken of her with her mortal male companions in World War I.  Actress Gal Gadot will erase any memories of either Cathy Lee Crosby or Lynda Carter. “Wonder Woman” ranks as a spectacular movie until she scrimmages with Ares, who resembles the Wizard of Oz’s Tin Man high on bath salts.  Apart from that predictable climactic clash with Ares, “Wonder Woman” ranks as an exciting, first-rate adventure opus about our heroine shedding her naïve innocence as she blunders through an amoral world.

“Wonder Woman” unfolds in contemporary Paris, at the illustrious Louvre Museum. Diana works as a Curator in the Department of Antiquities.  A Wayne Enterprises armored car pulls up, and a uniformed guard delivers a locked valise to her office.  Diana recognizes Bruce Wayne’s logo on it.  Opening the valise, she admires a sepia-colored daguerreotype of her in her Wonder Woman outfit with four troubleshooters posed with her.  The significance of the photograph is that Wayne Enterprises, a.k.a. Batman, has sent her the original copy.  The picture revives Diana’s memories about her youth on the enchanted Uptonian island of Themyscira.  Eight-year old Diana (newcomer Lilly Aspell) yearns to be an Amazon warrior, but her mother, Queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen of “Gladiator”) refuses to let her sister Antiope (Robin Wright of “Forrest Gump”) train her as a warrior.  Hippolyta warns her daughter, “Fighting doesn’t make you a hero.” Later, she calls Diana “the most precious thing in this world.” “I sculpted you from clay myself and begged Zeus to give you life.” Eventually, Hippolyta relents but tells Antiope that Diana must be the best Amazon on the island. Moreover, Diana should be able to defeat even Antiope!  Predictably, Diana (Gal Gadot of “Fast Five”) emerges from her training as the greatest Amazon.  Initially, when Zeus created the island paradise for the Amazons, he made it virtually impossible for anybody to find it.  As she is standing atop a cliff one day, Diana spots a plane as it penetrates the shield surrounding Themyscira.  The aircraft plummets into the ocean, and Diana plunges into the deep.  She rescues the aviator from the sinking plane and examines him on the beach.  Just as he recovers from the crash, Diana’s mother Hippolyta and her warriors ride up on a cliff overlooking the beach and spot German ships breaking through the invisible barrier.  Squads of German soldiers in the Kaiser’s Imperial Army storm the beach and open fire on the Amazons.  The intrepid pilot, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine of “Star Trek Beyond”), seizes a rifle from a soldier while the Amazon warriors let arrows galore fly at the Germans.  Incredibly, the Amazons repulse them!  Later, they learn from Trevor that he is an American secret agent masquerading as a German for the British.  Moreover, he has stolen a valuable notebook from a notorious German chemist, Dr. Mara (Elena Anaya of “Van Helsing”), who is testing a poison gas that will alter the outcome of the conflict.

The refreshing thing about “Wonder Woman” is her origins haven’t been told ad infinitum, like “Superman,” “Batman,” and “Spider-man.”  In fact, the set-up on Themyscira is one of the better parts, especially director Patty Jenkins’ choreography of the fight between the Germans and the bow & arrow wielding Amazons on the beach.  Anyway, Diana learns about the global tragedy of World War I and decides the only way the war will end is when she slays Ares.  Diana promises to help Steve Trevor escape from Themyscira if he will escort her to the war.  She takes the Lariat of Hestia, an incandescent rope that prompts captives in its twine to utter only the truth, her magical bracelets, and an impressive sword nicknamed ‘the Godkiller.’  The next best scene occurs on a World War I battlefield.  Wonder Woman emerges from the trenches and enters no-man’s land.  Germans from everywhere greet her with a hail of gunfire.  She uses her magical bracelets to deflect their bullets.  Gal Gadot acquits herself as well here as the eponymous character as she did in “Batman Vs Superman.”  Altogether, “Wonder Woman” amounts to a dame good movie!

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE MONUMENTS MEN'' (2014)

I love World War II movies, even stinkers like Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.”  For the record, I prefer Enzo G. Castellari’s made-in-Italy, World War II mission movie “The Inglorious Bastards” (1978) that Tarantino took and altered drastically with his remake.  Nevertheless, I haven’t seen a good World War II epic since Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” (1998) with Tony Hanks.  Everything after “Saving Private Ryan” pales in comparison to classics such as “A Bridge Too Far ,” “Battle of the Bulge,” “Beach Red,” “Castle Keep,” “Catch 22,” “Sands of Iwo Jima,” “The Bridge at Remagen,” “The Devil’s Brigade,” “The Dirty Dozen,” “The Great Escape,” “The Guns of Navarone,” “The Longest Day,” and “The Train.”  These seminal films appear with regularity during patriotic holidays on both AMC and Turner Classics.  Initially, I thought writer & director George Clooney’s “The Monuments Men” (** OUT OF ****) might tower above all the second-rate shrapnel that Hollywood has been shelling out like “Normandy,” “Company of Heroes,” “Battle Force,” “Fortress,” “Red Tails,” “Saints and Soldiers: Airborne Creed,” and “Pathfinders.”  Unfortunately, this fascinating chapter in World War II history about Allied soldiers who toiled to save the treasured paintings and sculptures of Western Civilization that Adolf Hitler looted during his 12-year reign as Der Führer amounts to a monumental bore.  Meantime, Clooney has assembled a superlative cast including “Private Ryan” himself Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.  The production values look first-rate.  Clooney’s production designers and art directors shot the works with their $70-million budget to create sprawling scenes of bombed out towns and authentic aircraft laden military landing fields.  Furthermore, to accentuate the realism, they lensed these maneuvers on location in England and Germany, too.

“The Monuments Men” covers an overlooked chapter in American military history that occurred after the Allies broke through Hitler’s defenses on the French coast in 1944.  Clooney and co-scripter Grant Heslov, who co-produced and appears briefly as a doctor in a scene, adapted the history tome “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History” by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter.  This World War II movie focuses on an outfit of old-ball scholars, architects, and museum curators who sought to recover all the art works that Hitler pilfered and planned to place in a Nazi museum in his home town in Austria.  An earlier text “The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War” by Lynn H. Nichols documented this little known part of history.  Indeed, Public Broadcasting produced a documentary based on the Nichols book back in 2008.  The documentary is more exciting than anything that Clooney recreates in this static spectacle.  Burt Lancaster played a brave French railroad official in “The Train” (1964) who thwarted the Nazis from stealing art.

“The Monuments Men” resembles a 1960s era World War II blockbuster with its plethora of military uniforms and equipment.  World War II fanatics will appreciate the authentic Sherman tank that rumbles past the camera in two scenes.  No, you won’t find any M-48 Patton tanks masquerading as either Sherman or Tiger tanks.  Unfortunately, little violence occurs in this loquacious, leisurely 119 minute opus.  Two of our heroes die from enemy bullets with a minimum of bloodshed.  Two of them capture a Nazi youth sniper during a brief exchange of rifle fire.  “The Bridge at Remagen” contained a similar scene.  A firefight breaks out in a peaceful pasture between Nazis and American G.I.s after one of our heroes spots a stallion and stops to admire it.  A Nazi officer fires his pistol at an off-screen Allied officer and mortally wounds him. Neither are shown in the same shot dramatically slinging lead at each other.  George Clooney swings a pick-ax at a brick wall.  Possibly the worst thing that occurs on screen is several actors smoke cigarettes.  The smoking is virtually pervasive.  Remember, Uncle Sam stuck cigarettes in K-rations.  Sometimes a rare profane word is uttered.  Otherwise, “The Monuments Men” amounts to a lukewarm World War II movie that loiters on the peripheral of the action.  At one point, two of our heroes are in the Battle of the Bulge.  Clooney never cuts loose with a machine gun at the Nazis.  Indeed, our starry cast spends more time talking about what they are going to do than riddling at the enemy with lead.  Occasionally, Clooney shows us the evil Nazis as they gloat over the stolen artwork.  Our heroes do undergo basic training.  At one point, a character stops crawling on an obstacle course and stands up while a G.I. is firing a machine gun.  Later, he is appalled when he learns that the soldier was blasting away with bullets instead of blanks!  “The Monuments Men” shuns conspicuous blood and gore as much as it avoids dramatic conflict. 

“The Monuments Men” suffers from several shortcomings.  First, characterization is one-dimensional.  We are given little insight into the heroes.  Each has a nominal scene that introduces them, but Clooney is more interested in what they are doing than who they are.  Cate Blanchett plays the most provocative character.  She served as a secretary to the Nazis and maintained a journal of their systemic looting of treasures from Paris.  Initially, she is imprisoned for collaborating with the Nazis, when she hated them.  After our heroes spring her she approaches them with suspicions until Matt Damon flashes his reassuring smile.  Second, the storytelling is episodic.  Various men go off on various adventures.  Third, the adventures lack pugnacity.  Nothing memorable either happens or is uttered.  Fourth, Clooney abhors dramatize anything.  A land mind scene in a cave could have yielded a little sweat and anxiety, but Clooney plays it strictly for amusement.  Fifth, the orchestral theme music fails to bolster the action and often sounds like it is undercutting it.  Watching “The Monuments Men” is the equivalent of fatigue duty.