Doctor Strange (2016)

rating: ***

the story: An arrogant doctor loses the use of his hands, but his mind becomes greatly expanded.

review: The MCU Avengers cycle is a full-blown phenomenon that has come to define the modern cinematic era, and the twenty-three movies to date that comprise it have seemingly explored just about every kind of superhero movie imaginable.  Doctor Strange did it with magic (although it's also one of the few outright examples of superpowers in the franchise, too).  That's the main calling card here.

A lot of fans saw too many parallels between Stephen Strange and Tony Stark.  One of the few criticisms fans have leveled against these films is that the plots tend to be the same: brilliant individual has a fall, builds themselves back up, defeats villain in spectacular fight.  And the villain tends to be fairly uninspired (with a few exceptions).  But you can level the plot critique against just about any story.  I tend to think the specifics are worth considering.  Strange and Stark are only tangentially worth comparing at that level.  Stark may be a tech genius, but he's also building on a family legacy.  Strange is a brilliant physician.  They both may possess out-of-control egos, but Strange is far more likely to use his skills to actual benefit than Stark, who initially just wants to make easy money, without caring about the consequences.  For Strange, he may alienate colleagues, but he's undeniably saving lives.  He believes he can save more lives if he can just perform his research undisturbed.  Essentially, Stephen Strange is House on a grander scale.  (It's really hard not to envision the producers using the Hugh Laurie breakout role as a pattern for Strange, and how they determined Benedict Cumberbatch to be the best pick for the role.)

Then Strange goes on the journey to becoming Doctor Strange, and the visuals take over.  Clearly the movie itself was inspired as much by Inception as the Harry Potter films, and letting the blend of them run wild.  Too wild, really, however awesome the results.  The characters never really treat them as anything but meaningless backdrop.  They're audience eye candy, nothing more.  But still hugely notable.

Doctor Strange is the "Sorcerer Supreme," but he is also, essentially, a superhero wizard.  And that's the role he fills in the MCU.  The ending features a nifty time-repetition that the character's later crucial appearance in Avengers: Infinity War suggests is how he discovers the only way to beat Thanos (in all fairness, that's probably the best sequence of this film, watching Strange repeatedly confront what is otherwise a pointless CGI effect just as doggedly each time, so it would probably have been just as pointless to repeat the sequence, especially when we know Strange can't win this time).

Cumberbatch has a meaty role to play in this appearance (he doesn't have nearly as much to work with in later appearances to date), and is once again thoroughly Cumberbatch.  Rachel McAdams is probably the most credible female supporting player, having often played this type where others in the MCU felt hamstrung in similar roles.  Tilda Swinton is perhaps about as perfectly cast as she's ever been as the Ancient One, Mads Mikkelsen letting his eyes do all the work in the way he so creepily often does.  Benedict Wong is the kind of actor who doesn't need much to make an impact.  Benjamin Bratt has a tiny role that makes you kind of wonder why they even bothered.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is the most baffling case.  He went from starring in the highly acclaimed 12 Years a Slave to this rather than, say, Black Panther (who instead is played by Chadwick Boseman, who is an utter charisma void).  I don't get it. 

This is not a movie that expects much from its audience, and so it doesn't really try much, aside from visually.  It slides by on mumbo jumbo.  Why Strange is as good at magic as he is at surgery, not particularly explained.  It just sort of happens.  But if you don't care, you get a movie that does just about what it needs to.  And at that, it's about as good or better than the average MCU film.  It knows what it really needs to accomplish, and at least nails that.  Knowing what Strange does in other movies is just kind of icing on the cake. 

Midnight in Paris (2011)

rating: ****

the story: A Hollywood screenwriter working on his first book imagines life was idyllic in 1920s Paris, and then somehow ends up there.

what it's all about: Admittedly, my experience with Woody Allen is still shamelessly incomplete, loaded to a generous portion of his recent work while leaving his earlier films mostly unexperienced except for a so-long-ago viewing of Annie Hall that I have no clear memories of it now, but I would have to say Midnight in Paris is one of my favorites, and I think it will stand as one of his signature artistic statements.

Owen Wilson grafts his natural charm to the classic Woody persona of the anxious would-be lover seeking answers to life's questions.  I never really get why critics complain about the Woody persona.  I loved Kenneth Branagh's take in Celebrity.  Technically, Will Ferrell plays it in Melinda and Melinda, although it might be difficult to see as he takes a backseat to Radha Mitchell.  You might even say Colin Farrell plays it, in tortured fashion, for Cassandra's Dream.  Wilson is such an amiable talent it's sometimes easy to take him for granted (apparently about a decade past he struggled with real despair for perhaps that very reason), but Midnight in Paris owes a huge debt to him.  It wouldn't work nearly as well without him accepting the lunatic premise that never really attempts to explain itself, and is all the better for it.  Who else could sell it with such casual acceptance?

The show is stolen, however, by a pair of supporting performances, of diverging length.  Adrien Brody, who ended up being taken for granted after his Pianist breakthrough, is a hugely amusing Salvador Dali (!), who seems to have stepped out of a Wes Anderson movie, maybe.  You can watch the movie for the pleasure of Brody's Dali alone.  You can do that, but you'd be missing Corey Stoll's breakthrough performance as Ernest Hemingway, who is basically the exact opposite of Woody Allen.  The sheer bravado of it is breathtaking.  Stoll, who has continued supporting and television roles since giving us his Hemingway, commands the screen and translates all over again the charm of a writer almost better known for his personality than his prose.  But he'll make you want to read the prose, too.

Together, Brodi and Stoll make mincemeat of Michael Sheen's blowhard intellectual, who's so busy trying to impress everyone, including Wilson's would-be bride Rachel McAdams, cast in the classic Allen archetype of the lover who just doesn't understand and doesn't even care to try, that it's kind of tragic for Sheen, and McAdams, because they continually disappoint through no fault of their own, because they can't possibly hope to contend with them.  Isn't that kind of the point?  Wilson thinks life can't get any better than his romantic notions of the past, and so to have the two most important figures of the present be so utterly charmless in comparison, that's storytelling.

So ironically, Marion Cotillard leads the rest of the cast as the would-be replacement lover Wilson discovers suffers from the same pains he does, only she's from the 1920s and wishes she were some thirty years earlier still...Cotillard is a master of fading into her mysterious beauty (there's a great bit about that and Pablo Picasso in the movie), ethereal, the elusive connective tissue that holds the whole thing together.  Toss in Kathy Bates and a pre-Loki Tom Hiddleston, and you have a cast that's rewarding on every level, that knows exactly what it needs to accomplish, and rewards repeated viewings.  I mean, Hiddleston in 2011 had Midnight and Thor released within weeks of each other.  He plays F. Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight, the first famous face Wilson meets, handily introducing him to Stoll's Hemingway.  Hiddleston's scenes are also stolen by a crackerjack portrayal of Zelda Fitzgerald, but watching them again, knowing what was about to bloom for Hiddleston, is to love the quirks of fate. 

It's a movie that's ridiculously easy to like, and the more you watch it the more you like it.  And it's got a big statement to make, too, about living in the past, and how it's both not as good for you as you might imagine, and that it is as good for you as you might imagine.  Wilson undeniably benefits from his experiences, even as his personal life crumbles, and he learns there's a limit to the experience.  But then, he also meets a local Parisian, a contemporary who shares the more grounded outlook he cobbles together, or perhaps was always there.  I mean, he remains enchanted by Paris itself throughout the movie.  Ironically it's Steen and McAdams who keep presenting a warped view of Wilson's fixation on the past.  That's another reason Wilson is perfect for this movie, because he's able to let their negativity slide off of him without unneeded drama to further complicate things.

And that's really the spirit of Midnight in Paris, the ability to  enjoy itself, say something profound, and move on.