Review of "Fast Five"

'Fast Five" is a loud, sloppy, outrageous, muscle-bound cartoon of a movie. People are probably going to love it.

This is director Justin Lin's third time around with the "Fast and Furious" franchise, and with it he switches gears, taking what has been primarily a street racing series and turning it toward heist hi-jinks.

Don't worry, fans; there are still lots of shiny cars vrooming through the movie at high speeds. It's just that this time the cars and their drivers have bigger ambitions. It's "The Fast and the Furious Italian Job."

The movie starts with Dom (Vin Diesel) in a bus on his way to a life sentence in prison. But, of course, his old partner-nemesis O'Conner (Paul Walker) and his sister, O'Conner's girlfriend Mia (Jordana Brewster), manage to break him out.

Next stop Rio, where the three get involved with stealing some cars off a moving train (the film's most over-the-top stunt), managing in the process to infuriate the country's top gangster.

So the gangster is now out to get them, but he has to stand in line as a special crew of FBI fugitive hunters has been sent to Brazil to bring them in. This crew is headed by Hobbs, played with sweaty, muscle-flexing nuance by Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson.

What will our heroes do? They decide they've got to steal the gangster's money — $100 million. So in a classic but somewhat lowbrow way they assemble a team of specialists, a sort of greasy "Ocean's 11," bringing back characters from previous "Furious" films, most of whom have little to do.

As heist movies go, this one is pretty lackadaisical. The plan devolves into fuzzy chaos, and the entire enterprise is only an excuse for a big crazy race-through-the-streets and smash-cars ending. The auto body death toll here may actually exceed that of "Bad Boys II."

It's understandable that Lin wanted to take a right turn into heisting with the franchise — it gives the series someplace to go.

But heist movies should lock intricately into place, while this one just lurches to its end. Next time, let's have a real plan.

For Diesel, who looks more artificially inflated every year, these films have become his career; this is the first film he's made since "Fast & Furious." The same can pretty much be said for Walker and Brewster as well. These people are literally living off this franchise, so they'd better hope the heist thing catches on.

It probably will. The "F&F" films are all pretty dismal (the oddball "Tokyo Drift" remains the most interesting), but they give audiences what they want: lots of flashy cars, fast scenes, fights, stunts and psychic noise.

You can't say "Fast Five" delivers the goods, but it delivers what it's supposed to.

Review of "In a Better World"

Simply put, this would be a better world if there were more films like "In a Better World."

Not that this year's Oscar winner for best foreign language film is all butterflies and jellybeans. It's decidedly not. It challenges the viewer, eschews easy answers, raises ugly questions and faces tragic situations head-on. But director Susanne Bier, working again with scriptwriter Anders Thomas Jensen (they previously did the masterful "Brothers" and "After the Wedding"), manages to bring great reality and emotion to eerily believable moments in this film.

She never gives in to sensation, she never loses control of her often out-of-control characters, and she guides the film's roiling emotions toward a properly imperfect end.

The setup is a bit complicated, but then life is.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt) is a Danish surgeon working in African refugee camps. The need there is overwhelming, but he's professional and carries on. Still, he's rocked to the core when someone brings in a woman who has had her living fetus cut out of her.

It turns out this was the work of someone called "The Big Man." The Big Man likes to make bets on what gender baby a woman is carrying, and then he cuts the child out to prove if he's wrong or right.

Meanwhile, back in Denmark, Anton's oldest son, pre-teen Elias (Markus Rygaard) is being bullied mercilessly at school. Enter new student Christian (William John Nielsen), a boy whose mother has just died and is in no mood for bullies.

When he emphatically puts Elias' attackers in their place, a bond grows between the two boys.

After all, Christian is down to one parent, the too-understanding Claus (Ulrich Thomsen), and Elias' parents have separated because of Anton's long leaves of absence and an apparent indiscretion.

When Anton returns home on a break, he and his physician wife Marianne (Trine Dyrholm, playing brilliantly beneath the character) share custody of Elias and meet Christian.

Soon however, it becomes apparent to Elias that something has snapped inside of Christian. This occurs to him around the time Christian begins building bombs.

This tension comes to a head when Anton, trying to break up a tussle between his younger son and another boy, is accosted by the other boy's father and challenged to a fight.

Anton attempts to explain to his children how fighting is never the best method to resolve problems. But Christian will have none of it. And suddenly Elias finds himself crushed within the argument.

Then Anton is sent back to Africa, where he finds the notorious Big Man requesting/demanding medical help.

What can Anton do? He's a doctor.

Moral pitfalls and dark choices litter this film; they are ugly situations that press in on the characters — socially, psychically, emotionally. And they each have consequences, often grim, always fraught with uneasiness or danger.

Yet somehow Bier and screenwriter Jensen keep it clear that these are real, breathing people enduring life's trials. Using beautiful Danish sunrises and sets, Bier constantly reminds that all these intense problems co-exist with intense beauty.

"In a Better World" doesn't so much dream as it does discover the decency down deep. It is heartbreaking and at times harrowing, yet it also manages to never be without wonder.

This isn't simply a film worth seeing; this is a film to treasure.

Review of "Thor"

'Thor" is a tale of two worlds, which may be one world too many.

Essentially, when the movie comes down to Earth it's pretty good. But when it spends time across the universe — and it spends a lot of time across the universe — it's pure geek fare. Which may thrill geeks but leave others yawning.

Across the universe sits, apparently, the fantasy realm of Asgard, a sparkling city of magical bridges and hallowed halls housing a race of do-good warriors who are sort of guardians of the galaxy.

Odin (Anthony Hopkins) is king of this world. His one son, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), is an arrogant hot-head who lives to do battle. The other, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), is a shifty magician. Each man wants to be king.

When Thor goes off on some unauthorized inter-planetary vengeance mission, busting the chops of evil blue giants who love to freeze things, Odin flips his literal wig and, as punishment, banishes Thor to earth.

All the preceding, which takes up the film's first half hour, is delivered with full fantasy pomp and circumstance, with characters dressed in armor and capes, gold goblets raised, giant monsters unleashed and gobs of computer-created visuals.

Then Thor hits the ground and the movie becomes a lot more fun. Odin drops his boy in the New Mexico desert, where he's promptly hit by a car driven by scientists studying the sky.

Those scientists would be the lovely Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), her irreverent assistant Darcy (Kat Dennings) and mentor Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgard).

At this point, the film becomes a funny fish-out-of-water story as the imperious Thor runs face first into American culture, and Hemsworth transforms his character (a bit too easily) from a self-loving jerk to an amiable lug.

As he's doing this, a sort of obligatory chaste instant love occurs between the big guy and scientist Jane, although few sparks are detected on screen.

Luckily for the plot, Odin tossed Thor's signature weapon, the mighty hammer of whatever-or-other, down to Earth behind him, so Thor has something to do when he gets here. A secret government agency has surrounded the hammer — it conveniently landed a few miles from where Thor touched down — and now Thor needs to reclaim it.

And so on. Eventually Thor zips back to Asgard for a final geek-fantasy showdown that's so overblown it makes "The Lord of the Rings" look like it was based on actual events.

All of this is directed by Kenneth Branagh, the Shakesperean actor-director who has much experience with costume dramas and little-to-none with comic book epics and 3-D visual spectacles.

For some reason he shows a particular affection for faraway shots — tiny horsemen crossing a long bridge with a magical city glimmering in the background — that take on an irritating 3-D fuzziness.

And while he lets humor aid the earthbound scenes, everything set elsewhere has a dreary, heavy tone. Maybe the surroundings are so inherently silly that he — and the film's eight (!) screenwriters — is afraid to be silly in them.

In truth, "Thor" is so thoroughly ridiculous (the people in Asgard just happen to all speak English) it makes "Spider-Man" seem plausible.

The best comic book films trade on self-effacing humor to offset their absurdity (think "Iron Man"); when "Thor" does this, it's kind of fun. When it gets ever so serious, it's tedious.

True believer comic freaks, of course, won't care. But for others, "Thor" may be too out of this world for its own good.

Required stuff

The long form drama we will be watching this semester is the first season of "Deadwood." Reviews will be due June 8.

The novels we will be reading are "The Given Day" by Dennis Lehane (review due June 1) and "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (review due June 13.