Monday, December 15, 2008

Yep, "Hulk Smash"

Thoughts on the new Hulk:

Architecturally speaking, I loved the early section filmed in a real Brazilian favela.

When his emotions become too overwhelming, Edward Norton turns into someone else who can act out his impulses, an embodiment of the id, and when he comes back to his regular restrained self, has no memory of what transpired. Did he form an anarchist army and bonk Helena Bonham Carter, or did he turn into a giant green monster and smash up tanks? Or both?

Bruce Banner calls himself Mr. Green in encrypted email correspondence with a cellular biologist whose alias is Mr. Blue. In a movie where one of the villains is played by Reservoir Dogs' Mr. Orange.

I have now seen two movies in which Tim Blake Nelson, the ultimate yokel simpleton in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, plays a scientific genius. (The other was Fido, by the way; highly recommended). Much more convincingly, too, than Liv Tyler can manage.

At a dramatic turning point in the story, the heavens suddenly open up into a drenching symbolic downpour. Just like a Hindi melodrama!

When Tim Roth turns into the bigger, meaner version of the Hulk, and the two are brawling through the streets of New York, I suddenly knew exactly what this movie is. It's a glossy big-budget remake of War of the Gargantuas! With a quick but entertaining cameo by Robert Downey, Jr. And there's nothing wrong with that.

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