For the week of September 12th, Marvel and Walt Disney Home Entertainment are bringing the blockbuster superhero adventure Captain America: Civil War to Blu-ray. The most misleading part of the film is the part of the title that comes before the colon: sure, Chris Evans' stoic, decent Steve Rogers is the central character, but Civil War often plays more like Avengers 2.5 in how it knots together so many protagonists around Cap. In the wake of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Rogers is even more committed to finding and helping his former best-friend/brainwashed HYDRA assassin Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan, finally getting a character to play), but a violent international incident (the best action sequence in a picture overstuffed with great ones) jeopardizes Rogers' pursuit and mobilizes the world against the Avengers' unrestricted response protocol. The political fallout quickly grows personal - while Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., obviously) supports more government sanctions on the Avengers, Rogers couldn't find the idea more distasteful, and their ideological schism fractures the superhero community, pitting faces both familiar (War Machine, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Falcon, Vision, and Paul Rudd's Ant-Man, who damn near steals the movie in his scant screen time) and otherwise (Chadwick Boseman's noble and tortured Black Panther; Tom Holland's excitable new Spider-Man incarnation) against one another. And that's not even factoring in the machinations of Daniel Brühl's mysterious Big Bad, all of which makes for a packed 147 minutes. A word of warning: newbies to the Marvel Cinematic Universe should not start here. You need to see like nine movies minimum (Iron Man 1-3, Captain Americas 1 and 2, Avengers 1 and 2, Ant-Man, and even the Edward Norton The Incredible Hulk, given the degree which William Hurt's General Ross factors into Civil War) to have any clue of what's going on here. However, if you are up to date on your Marvel homework, then this might be the MCU's crowning achievement. As a pure comic-book movie, Civil War is pretty much peerless. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo think in terms of splash pages, which means we get endless superhero permutations (we start with Team Stark vs. Team Rogers, sure, but almost ten years of Marvel movies means things are never that clean, whether we're watching Cap's closest allies Falcon and Bucky spar with each other even as they're trying to protect Cap or longtime friends Black Widow and Hawkeye pulling their punches when they find themselves on opposite sides of the Cap/Iron Man divide) and massive action setpieces, not least of which is an airport battle pitting the Avengers against one another that starts big and keeps expanding, and not necessarily in the ways you're expecting. Yet the Russos don't privilege action at the expense of all else. Just as important to the film are the political and social ramifications of the superhero conflict, and credit to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for refusing to simplify any of the main characters' viewpoints. Civil War is a rarity: a big-budget action epic that consistently maintains tension even though it really doesn't have any bad guys. It makes perfect sense that Stark would want to regulate his own actions - we're in the last stages of a self-maturation process that began when he left the cave in the first Iron Man - just as we never doubt Rogers' hardline stance against regulations (he did live through both Hitler and HYDRA, after all), so we're pulling for the two to work out their logical differences as it becomes uncomfortably clear that a peaceful resolution will not happen. Even Brühl isn't playing a one-dimensional baddie. There's a way to view this film where he's the hero, at least in his own mind. Everything comes to a head in a climax that reminds me, in fact, of Skyfall, considering that both films get smaller and more intimate as they wind down, although I'd give the edge to Civil War. Its final series of twists recall (Vague spoilers to follow) the grim wrap-ups to Seven and Oldboy, and I'll be dammed if Civil War doesn't earn that darkness.
Martin Liebman wrote that the film "may be the smartest superhero movie yet, building on the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe and dealing with the consequences of the Avengers' actions on a much larger scale. Other films - from Marvel and DC both - have not shied away from looking at the consequences of action, but it often seems on a more intimate, personal level, where soul-searching, not world government mandate, is at at the center of the conflict. Here, the movie presents two very disparate, yet related, ideas: give up control of oneself or maintain the very thing for which they fight: freedom. The film centrally pits Iron Man against Captain America, the latter long established as someone who has shied away from the weapons of war that made his company a fortune but who still, even through his wise-cracking antics, fights the good fight against evil and in the pursuit of the very ideals of freedom and self determination for which Captain America now stands against his friend. Captain America, easily the franchise's deepest and most fundamentally interesting character - someone who may be out of time but whose ideals withstand the test of time - leads the fight against governmental oversight, championing the idea that the world cannot afford for the politicians to pick and choose the battles they wage but, perhaps more important, the world cannot afford a governmental body dictating the actions of superheroes, particularly should they, as they always seem to do, choose to use their arsenal of champions for more underhanded operations. The film is very transparent in its commentary on bigger ideas like globalization and one-world government. Much like The Winter Soldier, the political overtones shape the movie but don't necessarily weigh it down, enhancing the deeper narrative while still operating under the general excitement the superhero genre provides."
From Warner Home Entertainment comes another sequel: James Wan's horror epic The Conjuring 2. Once again, we're following the adventures of Lorraine and Ed Warren (Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson, both of whom give these movies more credibility than they might otherwise deserve), only now, these paranormal investigators are following a case to Enfield, England; a single mother (Frances O'Connor) and her children are trying to survive a particularly brutal haunting, one that takes an unhealthy interest in the family's second oldest daughter (Madison Wolfe, who's as good as Farmiga and Wilson). If that setup sounds more than a little similar to the first The Conjuring, then you've lit upon the biggest problem with the new film. Just two movies in, and this horror franchise is a little bit past its freshness date. You can see the filmmakers hewing to the exact template that made the first Conjuring so bracing, meaning there's never that feeling of discovery. We have our first act introductions to the new family, the second act Warren investigation of Said Family, and the third act pyrotechnics. The Conjuring 2 also succumbs to sequel bloat - it's 132 minutes long and feels it. You could cut two or three preliminary scare sequences impacting the family without doing any narrative violence. Plus, the screenplay (by a committee that includes Carey Hayes and Chad Hayes, James Wan, and David Leslie Johnson) isn't as tightly constructed, with the climax in particular hinging on a revelation that comes out of nowhere (it's the worst kind of deus ex machina) and makes less sense the more you think about it. But here's the thing. None of that matters too much, given how relentlessly terrifying this new Conjuring is. For all its flaws, The Conjuring 2 is as reliable a scare-factory as any recent horror movie, with James Wan's increasing technical mastery (his Conjurings are so much more technically accomplished than the Insidious movies that it's hard for me to rewatch Insidious - it's like comparing a high-school journal entry to an undergraduate essay) working overtime alongside Don Burgess' gorgeous widescreen cinematography to create a plurality of fright effects (expertly teased slow builds; beautifully choreographed chaotic mayhem; two or three brilliantly placed jump scares). My favorite? I'm not going to spoil the gag, but it gets as close as anything to conveying a Lovecraftian sense of cosmic horror, where your brain struggles to process the horrible enormity of what you're seeing. From what I gather, this moment is pretty controversial. Many people think it's more ludicrous than it is scary, but in this case, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. I laughed out loud when this moment hit, and that's the point. Lovecraft knew there were certain terrors you either laugh at or risk total madness.
Michael Reuben noted that the film "attempts to top its predecessor at every turn, and the result is a bloated running time and an overly busy plot that ultimately saps the tale of any real tension. Wan is a good enough craftsman to provide several effective set pieces, and stars Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson remain engaging as the Warrens, but overall The Conjuring 2 is a letdown...Wan and his crew handle these [haunting] sequences with care and craftsmanship, but they are so numerous that the effect is dulled by repetition, not to mention the repeated sensation that Wan and [his] screenwriters...are recycling scares...Indeed, the film's most inventive sequence occurs early on, before the Warrens have left America, when Lorraine experiences a waking dream of the same spirit she glimpsed in the Amityville house (as with many of the best scares, it's a relatively simple effect involving a shadow that advances slowly and ominously around the room)...Wan and his team [also] remain coy about their films' cosmology, substituting the Warrens' personal conviction for the authority of the Gospels and leaving the Hodgson family's religion a complete question mark. It's this kind of purposeful ambiguity that allows Ed Warren to brandish a cross as if he were a vampire hunter, while Lorraine succeeds in banishing a demon with a tactic derived from the Brothers Grimm. Fathers Merrin and Karras had to work a lot harder, and sacrifice much more, when hell unleashed its demons."
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is offering a Blu-ray for the comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. The film acts as the biggest film showcase yet for The Lonely Island, the comedy group founded by Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone. Whether on their own or in their Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts, The Lonely Island has long enjoyed taking the piss out of pop music (if you haven't already, immediately seek out their great "Jack Sparrow" and "I Just Had Sex" music videos), so it stands to reason that their first official big-screen foray would be a music mockumentary detailing the rise and fall of Connor4Real (Samburg), a chart-topping megastar struggling with the catastrophically poor critical and commercial reception to his latest album (the insipidly named Connquest). Samberg, Schaffer, and Taccone use Conner's story to riff on so many different pop culture touchstones. Conner got his start alongside Schaffer and Taccone's characters in the Beastie Boys/N*Sync hybrid band The Style Boyz before pulling a Justin Timberlake (who has a fun cameo as Conner's carrot-obsessed personal chef) and ascending to even greater heights as a solo act, only to crash and burn through a mix of Justin Bieber-esque poor discretion (giving the okay to a line of electronics that always plays his terrible new album; engaging in ever-stupider stages shenanigans, including one that unintentionally makes him look like Buffalo Bill from one of the least appealing moments in Silence of the Lambs) and cultural irrelevance (Conner has to pander to his fans' constantly changing whims by embracing EDM and partnering with Chris Redd's lunatic Chance-the-Rapper surrogate Hunter the Hungry). Plus, The Lonely Island also gets to indulge in some wonderful song parodies, from Conner's alternatively catchy/grating smash hit "I'm So Humble" to the vicious Macklemore takedown "Equal Rights," where Connor tries to affirm his support for gay rights but ends up just mounting a pathetically aggressive affirmation of his own heterosexuality. All of that is good, but you can't shake the feeling that, even at eighty-seven minutes long, Popstar might be a little too much. For all The Lonely Island's glee at satirizing the pop world, most of the jabs are softballs. In a world where Justin Bieber takes a selfie nuzzling a prostitute's bare chest or Chris Brown almost kicks off a police standoff, you can't help but suspect that the tail has been wagging the dog for a long time. The absurdist jokes - an EDM-synchronized helmet that constantly blares the alien strike signal from War of the Worlds, or a "cut the camera" moment that turns into an off-camera battle between Conner and a vicious bee colony - land harder than the ones with any genuine parodist goals, and a shorter movie might mitigate the sensation that Popstar is belaboring a point we've already gotten. But I suspect that the film could play better on Blu-ray for that very reason. You don't have to watch Popstar all at once; rather, you can jump around, watching your favorite clips out of order so that the experience feels less like a movie proper and more like YouTube minus the Internet. That's not a slight. The Lonely Island took off because of their catchy viral content, and it stands to reason that Popstar works best when viewed in that context.
Finally, this week hosts a double-dose of screen auteur Brian De Palma. De Palma's vivid, playful suspense pastiches (often ribbing the tropes and themes of Alfred Hitchcock's pictures) have made endeared him to many a serious film buff, and Scream Factory's new Raising Cain disc offers a snapshot of De Palma at his most histrionic and delirious. Ostensibly, this thriller details the beyond-damaged relationship between Jenny and Carter Nix (Lolita Davidovich and John Lithgow); Jenny wants to ditch Carter and take their young daughter away to live with her lover (Steven Bauer, officially reuniting with De Palma for the first time since Scarface), but she doesn't count on the degree to which the obsessive Carter will pursue their child. Or Carter's even more depraved father. Or the involvement of Cain, a venal criminal with deep ties to both Nix men. This material might scan as risible soap on the page, but De Palma embraces the schlock and turns Raising Cain into nothing less than a love letter to star John Lithgow. The two had worked together before - Lithgow played memorable heavies in De Palma's Obsession and Blow Out - but in Raising Cain, Lithgow is the whole show, and I mean that almost literally: he plays Carter, Carter's father, Cain, and a couple other characters just for good measure. Lithgow is practically doing Kabuki Theater here, so stylized are his different personas, but his intensity matches De Palma's own. Even when the film around him stumbles (and in fairness, Raising Cain is mid-tier De Palma, never rising to the level of Blow Out or Dressed to Kill - De Palma constructs some crackerjack suspense sequences, but the non-Lithgow performances are a total wash), Lithgow remains a marvel of florid invention. You wish he really was playing all the characters like some demented take on Patrick Stewart's one-man Christmas Carol play. It's fitting, then, that A24 and Lionsgate would pick this date to street their acclaimed De Palma documentary, which is a treat for anyone who's ever responded to De Palma's singular screen visions. While co-directors Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow load the film with clips from De Palma's oeuvre, their approach to the director himself is as sedate as De Palma's films are often unhinged. We see De Palma in medium close-up, calmly taking us through the highs and lows of his work. Some of these stories are common knowledge (one of the best repeats: De Palma recalling how Sean Penn would torment Michael J. Fox on the set of Casualties of War), but De Palma is such a gifted raconteur than we never mind hearing him gab. Plus, Baumbach and Paltrow's clear familiarity with the man lead to some new gems, primarily those involving his negotiating of egos on the Mission: Impossible set. De Palma achieves the goal of all good cinema retrospectives - to make you want to see everything their subject ever made. This week, start with Raising Cain, and work out from there.