Waitress

Spoiler level: Moderate

When we last saw Keri Russell, a bomb had exploded in her brain, causing her eyes to go all loco, as she died in Tom Cruise’s arms in Mission: Impossible III. There are somewhat fewer exploding brains in her latest movie, Waitress, the slight but charming story of a woman’s life in pies.

I was trying to place it while watching the film, when it finally hit me – Waitress resembles nothing so much as Northern Exposure: The Movie. If you skipped that moment of early 90’s cultural zeitgeist, let me get you caught up. Northern Exposure was a quirky television dramedy that centered around the Alaskan town of Cicely. A neurotic young doctor moves to town and falls in love with a local girl, while a supporting cast of character actors have zany problems and fall in and out of love. It was an entertaining bit of TV.

Waitress is also an entertaining piece of TV; it just happens to be on celluloid.

Instead of Alaska, Waitress explores the ins and outs of a small Southern town, and particularly the comings and goings of the staff and patrons of Joe’s “pie diner,” a joint that serves all manner of food in the form of pies. Russell is Jenna, one of a trio of waitresses (along with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines and writer/director Adrienne Shelley) who serve up pies, gossip, and advice with equal gusto. They have quirky customers like Joe (Andy Griffith, looking pretty fly for a black-and-white guy), who reads his horoscopes aloud and has very specific needs as the town’s pie gourmand.

The film’s strongest scenes take place at the diner. The rapport between the waitresses is spot-on, with Hines in particular delivering her lines with a bracing bit of world-weariness that plays nicely off of the other two sweeter characters. Shelley, perhaps taking a cue from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s Good Will Hunting, wrote a role for herself that maybe no one else could have written, allowing her to showcase her particular strengths as a character actor. Hiding behind some Coke rims that do a poor job of obscuring her beauty, her character, Dawn, is maybe the easiest to fall in love with. She has an odd, lilting cadence to her speech that makes her sound, to borrow from another Southern girl, not a girl, but not yet a woman.

This leaves Russell. Exploding brain scene aside, I’m not very familiar with her work, never having seen her star-making TV show Felicity (though, through pop culture osmosis, I remember that she got a haircut and it was a big deal for some reason). So it was a pleasant surprise, at least to me, that she pulls off this role so nicely. Jenna’s a bit of a one-dimensional character. She’s almost a saint, creating fabulous new pies, and married to creep-in-need-of-a-razor Jeremy Sisto. Russell brings a spark of mischievousness to Jenna, who could have easily been a Pollyannic bore. In the opening scene, she discovers she’s pregnant, and is not thrilled about it, already having one baby (her weirdly infantile husband, Earl) in her life. As she tries to imagine how to ditch Earl and make enough money to enter a pie contest, she must deal with the new doctor in town.

If you’re a fan of Serenity or Slither (and you should be!), then you know Nathan Fillion, the wise-cracking, cool-headed Han Solo-esque hero of those movies. Fillion was on the fast-track to being the next Bruce Campbell, and may still get there, but as Jenna’s doctor he brings something more to the table than you might expect from his B-movie past. His Dr. Pomatter is kind of a dork. A lovable dork, sure, but a dork nonetheless. He doesn’t seem to be very good at his job, and he stutters and stammers in ways that would make even Hugh Grant and Woody Allen shake their heads with pity. He falls almost instantly in love with Jenna, despite being married to a pretty young doctor who clearly dotes on him. Jenna returns his affections, and soon they are carrying on an affair that surely must violate some part of the Hippocratic Oath.

And that’s about it for the plot. If you’ve watched enough TV, you should have a pretty good idea how things will end up (the resolution of Joe’s story is particularly sitcom-worthy). It doesn’t matter, though; Waitress is mostly about the little things. A surly cook’s brief moment of redemption. A lovely, quiet bus stop conversation. The pies. Those delicious, miraculous pies.

I guess every review of Waitress must make mention of Shelley’s untimely death (she was murdered last year by an irate construction worker), which casts a pall over this mostly sunny, innocuous movie. But she obviously poured a lot of herself into the film, infusing it with a sharp eye for tiny details and plenty of charm. If Waitress is a pie, it’s a sour cherry one – mostly sweet, and just a little tart – and we are fortunate that Shelley baked up this treat for us to remember her by.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Spoiler level: Moderately low

The latest installment of Gore Verbinski and Jerry Bruckheimer’s incredibly popular Pirates of the Caribbean series, At World’s End, gets off to a grim, spooky start.

The British Royal Navy has rounded up nearly all of the world’s pirates, and is hanging them eight at a time. Even pirate children are not exempt, and one prepubescent boy sings a melancholy pirate ode as he waits his turn. He is joined by the hundreds of others in this dirge, a chair is fetched for him to stand on so his neck can reach the noose, and there’s the title card. Nobody saves him. Nobody’s crying over him. This is a Disney movie, and they just hanged an urchin! It feels like something that would have been in the exciting first installment of the series. Not being a fan of last summer’s Dead Man’s Chest, I sat up in my seat a little. Maybe At World’s End would make things right after that chaotic, CGI-bloated headache of a movie.

Alas, no.

It’s been nearly a decade since George Lucas unleashed the awful Star Wars prequels on us, but no one seems to have learned anything from those misfires. For example, just because you have the technology and budget to cram every last inch of screen with detail and effects, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. This film is ugly and messy, with so much going on at all times, it’s hard to focus on any one thing.

Not that you’d want to focus on the story anyway; like Lucas’ prequels, At World’s End is almost endlessly expository. Director Gore Verbinski and his team of writers have scene after scene of characters either talking about the rules of the mythology they created, or patching up holes and inconsistencies. “Why can’t the character who brought Barbossa back from the dead do the same for Captain Jack Sparrow?” you might wonder. “That’s a good question,” they answer, “I’m glad you asked, and here’s five minutes of stuff we just made up that explains it.” The filmmakers are constantly jumping through hoops to make the irrational appear to be rational, the pirate equivalent of all that midi-chlorian nonsense in The Phantom Menace. We didn’t need to know how the Force operated then, and we don’t need to know how magic works in this place now. Gore and company have created this fantastical realm, where you cannot trust anything that you think you know, and then they undermine it at every turn with heavy-handed over-explanation.

And the shame of it, is that some of their fantastical realm is so clever and promising. There’s a great scene where we see the souls of the dead, all in individual rowboats, silently sailing through the ocean. And another one that has a character walking slowly on the deck of his ship as it blows up, somehow unharmed by the exploding shards and splinters of wood flying everywhere. It’s a knockout visual, and we’re glad they went through the trouble and expense of showing us something new.

All too often, though, it’s just more of the same things we saw in the other movies. There’s sword-fighting aplenty, though nothing to match the three-way duel on the wheel in the last installment. The characters double and triple-cross each other, like in the other entries, but it doesn’t really feel like anything is at stake, even though the movie is strenuously trying to convince us that everything is at stake.

Part of this, I think, is Johnny Depp’s fault. I’ve read numerous interviews in which he claims to love the character of Captain Jack, and would make twenty sequels, just so he could keep playing him. So it’s a surprise that Depp merely seems to be going through the motions. That spark and ingenuity in his portrayal of the captain, so fresh and funny in the first Pirates, is almost completely missing in these sequels. There’s still the eye-rolling, drunken stumbling, and slurring of speech, but the magic is gone. You know how when kids are doing something cute and funny, and then realize you’re watching them so they start “performing,” and it’s not cute or funny anymore? It’s kind of like that.

So there’s a bit of a charisma void at the center of the movie. Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom haven’t gotten any more interesting over the course of the films. The usually-reliable Bill Nighy is so buried under his Davy Jones calamari face, he’s not much help. Geoffrey Rush tries his hardest and hams it up as the resurrected Barbossa, but this out of control ship needs an anchor, and even he can’t hold it together. The anchor was obviously meant to be Depp, but (and this pains me to say, being a fan of the actor) he dropped the ball. He, and most of the others, seem to be lost amidst the set design and effects, and Verbinski, perhaps caught up in dealing with all the technical aspects of the film, has lost his touch with the actors, something which had been his strong suit in the past, in even the quirkiest of his movies.

With a two hour and forty-five minute running time, At World’s End is long, and feels even longer. And there are plenty of elements that could have been trimmed back or cut out altogether. The trip to Shanghai doesn’t add much to the story, other than to offer a new setting for action figure playsets. The Calypso subplot is confusing and mostly unnecessary. And while I enjoyed the version of limbo Depp finds himself in when we first meet up with him, the scene just goes on and on.

Like Peter Jackson’s King Kong, At World’s End confuses excess with excitement, hoping that you are so dizzy from the sheer amount of money being spent on-screen, you don’t notice that you’re not having very much fun.

Shrek the Third

Spoiler level: Low

This will be brief. I’m not going to put more thought into this review than the filmmakers put into the movie.

Background: I didn’t think the first Shrek was anything special. A few laughs, but mostly easy, forgettable ones. So I was completely caught off-guard by the thoroughly hilarious Shrek 2. The sequel was so cram-packed full of obscure movie references (Mongo anyone?), split-second sight gags and perverted Pinocchio jokes that it actually rewarded a second viewing. Plus, it introduced the fabulous Puss in Boots, who stole the movie without short-changing the holdover characters.

Shrek the Third introduces, uh, Justin Timberlake as a whiny high-schooler. Not quite the same.

The frog king of Far Far Away is dying, and the movie’s few laughs come at the beginning as Shrek and Fiona fill in for him. The king, having embraced his Hulk-ish son in law at the end of the last movie, wants Shrek to take over the kingdom. Shrek wants none of it, of course, so he, along with Puss and Donkey, set sail to round up Arthur, the next in line for the throne.

They find Arthur at his high school, where he is an outcast for no obvious reason, and even the D&D kids pick on him. And here’s one of the great problems with Shrek the Third. High school is so rich with comedic possibilities, it’s almost too easy. So, the writers zig where we expect them to zag, and don’t do anything funny with the setting at all. They don’t even try. There’s a pep rally and everyone’s mean to Arthur. That’s it. Not funny/mean. They’re just kind of dicks. You might think that since the movie stops here for ten minutes or so of its 80 minute running time, while nothing funny happens, it doesn’t exactly bode well for the rest of the hour.

Your sense of foreboding would be well justified.

Shrek 2’s villainous Prince Charming returns and riles up Far Far Away’s evil characters (Captain Hook, Snow White’s stepmother, etc.) who have been licking their respective wounds at the local watering hole. The villains team up to bring down Shrek and put Charming on the throne. This should be hilarious. But they don’t do anything. There’s no jokes; someone forgot to write them, and instead focused on the treacly Shrek and Arthur bonding storyline, which is inherently boring. That should have been simply a thin frame to hang the jokes on, but after five minutes of a campfire scene where the two trade stories about their bad dads, you know something has gone very wrong.

In an unexpected development, Shrek the Third has turned into an Austin Powers sequel, where apparently, when characters do that thing they did before, we are supposed to think it’s hilarious. Puss does the cute eyes bit. Charming shakes his silky hair in slow-mo. Fiona yells “Shrek!” (a lot). It was funny last time, why shouldn’t it be funny this time? Except it’s not. At all. It’s missing the spark of the last one. Actually, the spark has been doused with a jumbo Shrek-berry Slushee and stamped out with Shrek Ogre-Green Reeboks. It seems everyone involved was paying much more attention to what color marshmallow bits should go into Shrek the Third cereal than to the writing.

That leaves the talented voice cast out on a limb. Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas particularly try to make the best of their underwritten parts, but they’re not given enough to do. Cameron Diaz’s Fiona, who is expecting a baby, frets in the least interesting way possible, and is basically written out of the movie, until the writers decide there should be some Girl Power at the end, probably to sell more Fiona barrettes or something. Whatever. Everything about the movie, aside from its better-than-ever visuals, is half-assed. You won’t be surprised to learn there’s a sing along song at the end. You might, however, be surprised to learn that even that is faintly depressing.

28 Weeks Later

Spoiler level : Moderately Low

Zombie movies, more so than, say, slasher or possessed-ventriloquist-dummy films, seem to carry the burden of conscience on their lumbering, decaying shoulders. George Romero, often credited with creating the zombie genre, threw a hodge-podge of social relevance into 1968’s Night of the Living Dead, ranging from the Cold War to racism in the 60’s. That movie’s sequel, Dawn of the Dead, took on consumerism, and the recent Land of the Dead tackled class differences (rather shakily) and the Iraq war. 2002’s terrific 28 Days Later not only created a new zombie archetype, it also had something to say about AIDS and an overzealous military.

So it’s not really surprising that the sequel, 28 Weeks Later, takes on the current war in Iraq; the original was pretty much heading that way. What is surprising, though, is the sheer vitriol coursing through its veins. This is a much darker, much bleaker film than its predecessor, lacking even that movie’s very occasional sliver of mood-lightening. 28 Weeks Later isn’t very interested in letting you have a good time. Rather, it wants to wring you out, and you’re either the type who will enjoy this or not.

Me? Totally enjoyed it. After a fantastic beginning, soaked with shaky-cam violence, 28 Weeks Later settles down for a bit to introduce its plot. After the outbreak chronicled in the first film, the rage-infected “zombies” have starved to death, and London has been quarantined off to protect its citizens from any more attacks from the outside. There’s a great scene where the people being admitted back into the city are told of how life is getting back to normal in the destroyed city. “There’s even running water,” they are informed. Their faces light up, and it’s a grim reminder of just how quickly the things we take for granted can vanish.

We are introduced to two children, who will become the primary focus of this film. Tammy, the older sister, and Andy, the youngest person in London at 12 years old, are the children of Don (Robert Carlyle), a maintenance worked who survived that bloody opening scene. Their mother was apparently not so lucky, and the kids escape from the quarantined area to their old house, so Andy can have a picture to remember her by. They find more than a picture, though, and this is where the film takes off.

One of the pleasures of 28 Days Later was the convincingly deserted streets of London. Cillian Murphy wandered around the city in a daze, and it felt like he was the only one there. This film even exceeds that. The filmmakers have done an amazing job at making London look and feel like an abandoned theme park. After a while, you stop even thinking about how they managed to pull the effect off. These kids are the only ones there. When a military helicopter breaks this dream-like state, it’s truly startling, because we’ve bought this illusion so fully.

Of course the virus breaks out again; there’s not much of a movie if it doesn’t. But the way it does (which I will leave you to discover) is kind of brilliant. It will make you look at one of the film’s great posters again in a new light. The U.S.-led NATO operation, initially assigned to protect, gets a new assignment, and, like in the first film, our heroes are at the mercy of two types of monsters.

The Iraq parallels are unmistakable, and it would be easy to say 28 Weeks Later has a nasty anti-American streak. But in a big picture kind of way, the military actions at least are believable. Plus, we get two American heroes – a soldier and a military doctor – who take it upon themselves to protect the children. Because these aren’t your average everyday kids. They’re special, and special enough to disobey orders and risk some lives.

The action, once it gets going, never really lets up, and there are some great set pieces here. A scene with night-vision goggles replicates some of the chills that the ending of Silence of the Lambs stirred up. And there’s a nightmarish scene on the subway. Plus a dread-inducing chase scene at the beginning. This is, in nearly every way, an effective follow-up to Danny Boyle’s original.

It’s not perfect, of course. This is already shaping up to be the Summer of Contrivances, with Spiderman 3’s coincidence-a-minute screenplay, and now this, which has a few tough-to-shrug-off plot holes and unbelievable elements. One of the infected does not seem to follow the rules that the movie has set out for them. The character shows up repeatedly to menace our heroes, and, while this is particularly disturbing, it’s not really plausible (and yes, I know I’m using the word “plausible” in reference to a zombie movie, but this particular franchise strives for , and mostly achieves, plausibility). The children’s escape from a city full of lookout guards likewise requires some suspension of disbelief, and I’m not completely sold on one character’s change of heart at the end.

Still, this is much better than I would have guessed months ago when I first heard they were making a sequel without Boyle and Murphy. That smelled like Dumb and Dumberer to me, but Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has made a worthy successor to both Boyle’s film and the zombie canon in general. It’s not a typical “fun night out,” which, when I think about people seeing Wild Hogs, is what I imagine they are saying to each other right before they crank up the Norah Jones in their Escalades. No, this is an assault in the guise of a summer popcorn film, and will almost certainly be the ballsiest sequel of this very sequel-y season.

Spiderman 3

Spoiler level: Moderately High

Sam Raimi’s Spiderman 3 recently demolished box office records with its $150 million opening weekend haul, which amounts to about ten bucks for every close-up of the principal actors’ eyes welling with tears. “There’s no crying in baseball,” Tom Hanks once said, but there’s most definitely crying in crime-fighting. Oh, so much crying!

The soap opera, er, superhero saga picks up where the second left off, with Peter Parker enjoying Spiderman’s newfound popularity, especially with members of the police force, who are apparently just paid to stand around and point up with gaping jaws (Spidey better watch it or Bill Nighy’s going to show up and make him chase geese around Sandford). Peter wants to propose to Mary Jane, but she’s all sulky about a well-deserved bad review she received of her Broadway debut.

If Raimi drew inspiration from the Donner/Lester Superman movies for his first two Spiderman installments, he seems to have been watching too much Nick at Nite when considering this one. Harry Osborn gets hit on the head, and, in grand Gilligan/coconut tradition, forgets he was mad at Peter for supposedly killing his dad. James Franco is about equally frightening as best friend or mortal enemy. He grips a sentimental basketball like it’s a skull that needs some crushin’, but Peter doesn’t seem to notice, and our pals are chummy again, mostly to buy time for the screenwriter to introduce the new baddies.

The more superfluous of the new villains is Sandman, a.k.a. Flint Marko, a convict with a (natch!) weepy backstory and taste for Krueger-ian sweaters, who falls into the least secure science experiment that doesn’t involve Mentos and Diet Coke I’ve ever seen. Soon, he turns into a whirling sandstorm that steals money, and doesn’t do much else. In the laziest screenwriting since The Lost World’s oops-there-was-another-dinosaur-island-we-forgot-to-mention, we find out that, despite what we saw in the first film, Marko really killed Peter’s uncle. Peter, of course, wants revenge, which fortunately gives him something to do besides play (endless) phone tag with Mary Jane. Sandman insists on changing back into his Thomas Haden Church form whenever possible, presumably to justify hiring a name actor for a primarily CGI role.

This goes double for Topher Grace. His Eddie Brock character doesn’t have much to do either, until he turns into a snarling Bizarro Spidey named Venom. I’m not too familiar with the comic book roots of the character, but I would bet he isn’t constantly peeling back his licorice-y face so we can see Topher with fangs and Tasha Yar hair. It doesn’t help that Venom really only seems to be Eddie Brock in different clothes. It’s hard to feel threatened by this monster who still wields Grace’s snarky TV sitcom voice.

By the time Harry remembers everything, we’ve already suffered through Peter’s Fall Out Boy hair, Aunt May repeatedly reminding us this movie is about “forgiveness,” and a dance sequence so random and ill-advised, it’s almost endearing. This sets up the big finale, with the boys battling it out, and (wait for it…) Mary Jane in mortal peril. If they make a live action Legend of Zelda movie, Kirsten Dunst should play the princess – she’s got this damsel in distress thing down cold by now.

I’m a big fan of the first two movies, and Raimi in general, but I can’t even imagine sitting through Spiderman 3 again. It feels like Raimi let whatever Venom-type demon that persuaded him to make For Love of the Game back for an encore. It’s a thorough mess, and makes most Michael Bay movies look like models of coherence and restraint. If they make another of these, I think Raimi should pull a Tim Burton and stick to producing. Now where’s Joel Schumacher’s number?