Review: Savages

At one time, a new Oliver Stone movie came out like a threat. Natural Born Killers used a pulp screenplay to say something incendiary about the callousness of media. Soon after, he downgraded with U-Turn. Clearly his heart wasn't in pulp for pulp's sake. Savages continues in that vein.

Aaron Johnson and Taylor Kitsch star as Ben and Chon, growers of primo pot in Laguna Beach. Ben is laid-back and Zen, while Chon is hardened ex-military. They're good enough buddies that they share a girlfriend, known as "O" (Blake Lively). When Ben and Chon refuse to sell their outfit to a larger operation, "O" is kidnapped.

That's about it, for 129 minutes. Working from Don Winslow's novel, Stone's movie tries to cook up some twists and turns, but they depend on these simplistic characters trying to interact or look as if they care. For example, the movie requires Ben to "man up" for certain scenes, but not for others, and it's totally arbitrary. The movie very simply turns to vapor when these guys are onscreen.

Thankfully, Stone livens up with his supporting roles. Benicio Del Toro (who licks Lively's spittle off his face), John Travolta, and Salma Hayek add some much-needed insanity, if only momentarily. For his part, Stone occasionally fiddles with the movie's colors, turning things sun-baked yellow, or tropical fishtank rainbows, but mostly he's asleep at the controls.

In his heyday, Stone wrote a truly lunatic drug movie, Scarface, which earned the word "savage." Savages is more like a snooze.

Review: Battleship

At some point, in some Hollywood pitch meeting, someone said "alien invasion" and "based on a popular board game" at the same time, and the green light went on faster than an exploding robot.

Thus, Battleship was born.

Alien invasion movies usually work based on three things: strong characters, cool aliens, and a good idea. Battleship has boring characters, boring aliens, and a couple of minor ideas so stupid that they may elicit a temporary smile.

It begins with the hero, Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), as a lovable, scruffy loser who accidentally wreaks havoc while trying to impress a girl (Brooklyn Decker). Later, he joins the Navy and becomes a lieutenant, and he's not so scruffy or lovable anymore.

The girl turns out to be the daughter of an admiral (Liam Neeson). After Alex fails to ask the admiral for permission to marry his daughter, the aliens attack.

They look pretty much like giant Transformers, with Power Rangers stocked inside. The alien ships and armor contain a sensor that shows whether something is violent or not: green means safe, and red means violent. (How does it know?) If it's red, they blow it up.

Meanwhile, we get scenes of the girlfriend, a scientist (Hamish Linklater), and a wounded army vet with prosthetic legs (Gregory D. Gadson, who, in a tip of the hat to The Best Years of Our Lives, is the real thing), trying to sabotage the aliens' communications.

We also get the obligatory scenes with the Secretary of Defense and a bunch of other guys sitting around a big table.

The first stupid idea is how the movie fits in the "Battleship" board game motif; immune to radar, the surviving sailors figure out a way to track them using water displacement, electronic buoys and a computer grid. The scene only lasts a few minutes, but it's fun.

Then, when all the destroyers are sunk, the crew is forced to bring out a 70 year-old battleship, complete with its crew, a team of aging Korean War veterans that knows how to run her (shades of Space Cowboys). These old guys get no real names or characters, but they do get to swear from time to time, which is supposed to be cute.

The rest is visual effects, explosions, and pop star Rihanna, who gets to be sassy in her acting debut.

Director Peter Berg (The Kingdom, Hancock) doesn't so much direct as copy older ideas and throw money at them. If this is entertainment, we're sunk.

Blu-ray Review: John Carter

The name "John Carter" sounds like it could belong to anyone from a postal worker to a politician. But actually he's an intrepid explorer of other planets, born from the pen of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the late, great pulp writer that also created "Tarzan."

Carter first appeared in 1912 in a pulp magazine serial, which was later published in novel form as A Princess of Mars. Tarzan debuted the same year to far greater success. The ape man quickly made the jump to movies, which ranged from Johnny Weissmuller adventures, to trashy Bo Derek movies, Oscar-nominated dramas and Disney cartoons. But John Carter has never graced the big screen, until now.

What's most peculiar about the new 3D John Carter movie, however, is how much it resembles the recent Avatar -- and how much better it is.

The tale begins on earth, with John Carter (Taylor Kitsch of "Friday Night Lights") as a Civil War veteran-turned gold prospector. He stumbles across a cave and finds himself whisked away to Mars (called "Barsoom" by its natives). The planet's different gravity allows John to jump great heights and distances. This comes in handy, as John soon finds himself caught in a civil war between two tribes of red-skinned humanoid Martians as well as the neutral, nomadic green Martian creatures known as the Tharks. A beautiful princess, Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), and a slimy villain, Sab Than (Dominic West), help him choose sides. (Daryl Sabara plays Burroughs in a wraparound sequence, aimed at newcomers.)

And thus follows much chasing, escaping, fighting, racing against time, and even some puzzle-solving. Director Andrew Stanton, a familiar name from the Pixar productions Finding Nemo and WALL-E, makes his live-action debut, keeping the same feel for fluidity, rhythm, and space as in those animated classics. Likewise, co-screenwriter Michael Chabon is most definitely an ace-in-the-hole; that brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay -- and co-writer of Spider-Man 2 -- knows a thing or two about interpreting pulp and comics.

Only the movie's odd, minor-chord opening scene betrays the slightest bit of uncertainty from the filmmakers, and certainly the movie could have been a bit pulpier. But no matter how big and expensive John Carter looks, it remains enthusiastically a pulp story at heart. Conversely, Avatar often wobbled between preaching and illiteracy, and fun wasn't even a factor. John Carter practically celebrates the concept of adventure as it speeds along, and, as viewers, it's easy to join the celebration.

Disney has released a two-disc combo pack, with a DVD and a Blu-ray, which I hope people will catch up with. There's a "Disney second screen" feature, wherein viewers can access bonuses while watching the movie. There's a 34-minute making-of featurette, a short featurette on original author Edgar Rice Burroughs, deleted scenes, bloopers, and an audio commentary track by director Stanton and some of the producers.