‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ & ‘Boyhood’

Guardians of the Galaxy

Just when I thought I was completely worn out from superhero movies, writer/director James Gunn delivers “Guardians of the Galaxy,” the freshest, funniest and most grounded of the Marvel movies — ironic, considering it takes place almost entirely in space and co-stars a talking raccoon.

The story is standard comic-book stuff: A MacGuffin object, in this case an orb, that gives its owner the power to control the universe is coveted by many parties, some evil, some good. Rocket, the aforementioned raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper, is on the good side, a team of misfits led by space cowboy Peter Quill, a.k.a. “Star Lord” (Chris Pratt). Rocket’s partner is a tree creature named Groot (Vin Diesel). Oh yeah, these characters are way out of left field, and make the Avengers look plain in comparison.

Also on Quill’s crew are a vengeful alien named Drax (Dave Bautista) and a green-skinned ex-foe named Gamora (Zoe Saldana). She once worked for a power-hungry radical named Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), who seeks the orb for obvious reasons, and serves a higher power named Thanos (James Brolin).

What’s great about “Guardians of the Galaxy” is that although its story breaks no new ground, it plays fast and loose with the rules established by previous Marvel movies, including Joss Whedon’s “The Avengers,” which is pretty terrific in its own right. The darkly comedic, offbeat style of Gunn’s previous, smaller films such as “Super” and “Sliver,” prevails here in the face of a big budget summer blockbuster, and proves he is the real deal.

From the stellar soundtrack featuring hits from the 1970s and 80s, to the sharp, twisty screenplay and the knockout performances by all, but particularly by Pratt, a TV goofball turned movie star, and Bautista, a professional wrestler who blends an unexpected amount of sincerity and tenderness into a character who could otherwise have been bland filler, “Guardians of the Galaxy” gets it right. It restores my excitement for comic book movies and, beyond all probability, has me totally ready for a sequel.

P.S. Watch for a crazy post-credits cameo (Hint: George Lucas and Ron Howard brought this cult-status comic book character to life in the ‘80s with unfortunate results)

★★★1/2 (out of four)

 

Boyhood

Filmed over 12 years using the same actors, Richard Linklater’s astonishing cinematic experiment “Boyhood” is the ultimate coming-of-age story. From age 5 to 18, we follow Mason (Ellar Coltrane), a shy kid full of curiosity about the world.

Over the course of the film, we intimately get to know him, his sister (Lorelei Linklater, daughter of the filmmaker), his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke), and various other people who filter in and out of Mason’s life — some of them are abusive and cruel, others are kind. But “Boyhood” rarely draws lines in the sand, separating characters we are meant to root for and others we are meant to boo. It captures the ambiguity and uncertainty of life, and the shades of gray that make up society and family.

There are so many nuanced moments in this movie that illuminate and deepen our understanding of life and human interaction. “Boyhood” tells a subtle story rarely punctuated by melodrama, and the parts really add up to something more than the whole. When the film begins, we take this journey with Mason as he discovers sexuality, alcoholism,  depression, art, and tries to understand it all, just as we all do.

I can’t say that I’ve seen a film more universal than this. “Boyhood” contains every Linklater quality and quirk seen in his previous films such as “Waking Life,” and “Slacker,” but where those films drift around from character to character, this film instead traces the single human trajectory of his main character. We’ve all seen and felt the things Mason experiences. They are profoundly familiar to us, and it is in its authenticity, attention to detail and grounded structure that “Boyhood” shines.

The dedication and risk that everyone, particularly Linklater, took while making this film is incredible. To shoot a film over 12 twelve years and capture and harness the true changes in the actors’ lives and appearances was a stroke of genius, one that pays off so well that “Boyhood” literally vibrates with life and energy. It’s a sprawling film that runs at just under three hours, but it never out stays its welcome. You get lost in it, and its heart and ingenuity overcome you.

★★★1/2 (out of four)

‘The Act of Killing’

In 1965, the Indonesian army overthrew the democratically elected government of President Sukarno. They used death squads to kill all who opposed new regime, which added up to the extermination of between half a million and 2.5 million people in less than a year. The people who did it have been in power ever since.

Anwar Congo, who is the focus of Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Act of Killing,” is one of potentially thousands of these death squad executioners who ordered and took part in the torturing, strangling, burning, raping and extermination of millions of human beings. Prior to the military takeover, Congo and his cohorts lived a criminal lifestyle working as black market gangsters.

These “movie theater gangsters,” as they were called, would spend their time scalping movie tickets and committing other more serious crimes, while always managing to find the time to indulge in their favorite Hollywood movies. In this film, Oppenheimer challenges Congo to recreate his memories of torture and execution by filming them in scenes inspired by various movie genres of his choice.

Congo enthusiastically accepts and, over the course of the documentary, tries to communicate what he remembers seeing and feeling during his reign as a death squad leader through scenes based on Hollywood gangster movies, horror movies and musicals. There even comes a surreal, chilling scene where he wants to recreate his nightmares, where he says his victims haunt him to this day.

On one level, what Oppenheimer has done here is put a face to these crimes. Such crimes are so enormous, and so unimaginable in scope and ferocity, that to actually see this film put a face on them is both incredibly unsettling and completely necessary.

We see people, not monsters, who have committed horrendous acts. We see them ostentatiously bragging about their crimes, boasting about how many they killed and how cool they looked while doing it — Congo, in one scene, reminisces with an old black and white photo of himself, in which he is dressed like Marlon Brando or James Dean: slick hair, expensive suits, sunglasses. We see them laughing while fondly recreating their crimes for the camera, taking their performances seriously while seemingly unaware of, and perhaps uninterested in, the gravity of what they have done.

On another level, he has managed to expose a nation plagued by hypocrisy, propaganda and intimidation. We see scenes of infuriating duplicity from former death squad gangsters and current leaders who, in the same breath, deny the recreated brutality on-screen is the truth, and then celebrate it as truth. They relish the opportunity to reminisce, but appear more and more morose about the atrocities that they are acting out.

Finally, we see an arc of painful realization from Congo, whose demeanor changes drastically throughout the film as he watches the footage of his reenacted crimes and sees, from a perspective that is at once removed and deeply involved, the depravity of his actions. It sickens him, and drives him to proclaim desperately to the filmmaker: “I can feel what the people I tortured felt.”

Oppenheimer replies: “Actually, the people you tortured felt far worse, because you knew it was only a film. They knew they were being killed.”

Congo is haunted by what he has done, as he should be. Filmmaker Werner Herzog, who is no stranger to exploring the darker sides of human nature, produced this film, and in his documentaries such as “Grizzly Man” and “Into the Abyss,” he will often allow his camera to run a bit longer than expected, focusing in on his subjects and capturing rare moments of startling honesty that otherwise would be lost somewhere in time.

Oppenheimer uses this method to its maximum potential in “The Act of Killing,” and captures countless moments of vivid, somewhat accidental sincerity. The subjects are astonishingly bold about their history, but the power of documentary filmmaking allows for a gradual shift in mood, and opens up virtually endless streams of conversation about why people kill each other, and how acts of mass execution come to impact the executioners.

With his camera, Oppenheimer has removed the veil from something devastating and essential about human behavior. “The Act of Killing” is unlike anything I’ve seen. It’s equally brutal, bizarre and powerful, and it’s an extraordinarily important piece of documentary filmmaking.

★★★★ (out of four)