The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

Let's get a couple of things out of the way. The Avengers opens on such a hollow note that its entire first act struggles to find any kind of footing at all. Trapped between a need for some basic exposition and a total disregard for anyone foolish enough to wade into this film without having seen its multiple-franchise foundations, The Avengers thus has nothing for anyone as it slowly, ever so slowly, brings together its collection of superheroes. And though I've never previously bought the charge that Joss Whedon is a smug writer, I nearly blushed at the self-satisfaction in some early exchanges and setups, so obvious and fan-massaging that their cynicism threatened to divorce me entirely from what I hoped would be Whedon's big break. Maybe all that trash-talking he'd done over the years for those who "misread" or "mishandled" his early film scripts was just a smokescreen for a writer whose considerable gift for television writing simply didn't translate to the more concise storytelling of cinema.

Then, something happened that has not occurred in any of the Marvel films leading up to this blowout: the movie kept getting better. Most of the previous films started with intriguing concepts and approaches before fizzling out in half-baked, perfunctorily executed action romps that served only to set up the chess pieces for this picture. Even Captain America, easily the best of the Marvel Studios franchise starters, dipped a bit in the middle, though it differs from its peers in that it finished strong where movies like Iron Man, Thor and The Incredible Hulk ended on lame notes. But The Avengers swaps the usual Marvel dynamic, moving out of a dull, lazy setup into something clever, well-observed and, ultimately, thrilling. By the time everything fell into place, my laundry list of complaints evaporated in the pure rush of Whedon's ambition.

The first act suffers for the unavoidably arbitrary nature of the events that bring Marvel's heroes together. When Loki (Tom Hiddleston) materializes out of his deep-space exile in a S.H.I.E.L.D. base on Earth, he instantly starts wreaking havoc and steals the Tesseract, that glowing blue cube that factored so prominently in Thor and Captain America. As MacGuffins go, the Tesseract isn't engaging or broadly explained enough for the severity placed on it to work, and even when Loki possesses S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (including Jeremy Renner's Clint "Hawkeye" Barton) and levels the secret, hi-tech facility, the stakes are so unclear that the worry in Nick Fury's (Samuel L. Jackson) face doesn't register.

But Fury cannot sufficiently stress the danger the world faces and sets about recruiting all the superheroes he met in those post-credits stingers in past Marvel films. Arduously, the film comes to each of these heroes—Tony "Iron Man"Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Bruce "Hulk" Banner (Mark Ruffalo, replacing Ed Norton), Steve "Captain America" Rogers (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Natasha "Black Widow" Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson)—individually, rehashing their personalities and backstories before bringing them together. These scenes drag along with dead weight, giving the impression that Loki could have vaporized the planet in the time it takes the movie to even put these people in the same room, much less in a team.

Once Whedon does put all these larger-than-life personalities in the same shot, however, he displays a canny ability to subvert expectations for immediate, boisterous action. Whedon's television programs are filled with makeshift, uncertainly functioning families brimming with tension and different goals, and he compounds that spiky energy with these superpowered people. The first great action sequence involving the heroes is among each other, Iron Man and Thor trading blows as their target, Loki, looks on with a grin. And when they bring Loki bound to a flying aircraft carrier serving as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mobile headquarters, the feeling that something horrible is about to happen is omnipresent.

This middle section allows Whedon to stretch out with his actors and, having moved past the flippant, insider-joke-laden dialogue of the start, truly delve into the characters. In a setup reminiscent of the Angelus arc in Angel's fourth season, S.H.I.E.L.D. puts Loki in a cage, limiting his physical movement and maximizing his psychological warfare. Hiddleston lets every jab and uncomfortable insight flick off his tongue on hot spittle, getting into the heroes' heads. My favorite scene of the film pits Loki against Black Widow, inverting Hiddleston's charm into frightening invective until Whedon pulls the rug out from underneath the moment in fantastically funny fashion.

Whedon's sarcastic humor and his gift for writing powerful but flawed characters suits him perfectly to Stark and Banner. Downey coasted in Iron Man 2, lazily delivering arrogant one-liners clearly written to capture the spontaneous, unexpected magic he brought to Stark. Here, though, he has better barbs, and better characters to square off against, bouncing off Captain America's uptight obsolescence and curiously prodding Banner in the hopes of seeing him transform. In Whedon's hands, Stark is no longer celebrated for his stand-offish, cocky nature but rightly seen as the insufferable, popular kid in high school. (Even the recycling of AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" from Iron Man 2 feels more like a jab at Stark's predictable egomania than a convenience of rights issues.) Yet it's also Whedon who gets the first true bit of humanity and empathy out of the billionaire genius, first in his kinship with Banner and then in response to an event that galvanizes the whole cast.

Ruffalo wastes no time establishing himself as the greatest Bruce Banner yet. His Banner has a perpetually remorseful, embarrassed look, asking others whether they know about him in the resigned but bashful way of a man who is used to having to admit a terrible secret to strangers but can never get used to the shame of the admission itself. He speaks slowly and deliberately, projecting a neutral energy that finds an anxious middle-ground between calm and angry. Even the animation for the Hulk is superb, using motion-capture and nuanced CGI to capture Ruffalo's sad eyes in the lumbering green behemoth. Thor and Captain America, incorruptible idealists, fare less well, as Whedon would need even more than the film's already-bloated running time to break down their two-dimensional goodness. Still, Evans at least gets to flex his acting chops with a constant, subtle discomfort befitting a man out of his time. I hope the next Captain America film gives Evans a meatier role to explore in the modern era.

The final act is at once irritating thanks to Whedon's clumsy action directing and exhilarating for how well he corrals everyone into the racket of Manhattan being torn apart by the Avengers and Loki's alien army. Spatial geography in the shots is incomprehensible, yet the larger image of the Hulk clobbering soldiers over there, Hawkeye picking off targets with casual precision, Captain America and Black Widow holding down the ground level et al. is easily traceable. The sheer ambition of the climactic sequence also helps, the tearing apart of a city reminiscent of a Michael Bay film but coordinated to give more heft to the characters and, generally speaking, to not delight in the wanton destruction. As thrilling as the sight of the Hulk punching some massive flying beast is, there's an urgency to end this chaos as quickly as possible counter to Bay's basking in pandemonium. Whedon is clearly having fun, but the climax works less as a dumb showcase for (admittedly great) special effects than as the throughline for these characters, their powers and their relationships to each other.

That idiosyncratic touch, a preference for the actual characters over the spectacle, doesn't redeem the film's many flaws of pacing, direction, and the occasional bit of dodgy dialogue. But it does it at least offset them, offering a fresh take on the Marvel formula that already feels set in stone after only a few years of dedicated work in setting up this mega-tent pole. Were I to simply look at the film on an isolate, critical level, I'd have to conclude that it was a failure. It languishes in a first act it does not even attempt to make interesting or coherent, then moves past that vital second-act inner conflict between the heroes too quickly, and finally flirts with mindless action in a way Whedon never has before. But like the Avengers themselves, the film works as a whole in a way it doesn't when contrasting individual elements. In fact, that tension among its unwieldy elements is part of the movie's charm, making it even more exciting when everything somehow comes together in a satisfactory way. Whedon may succumb to the fad of frenetic editing and jumbled close-ups on action, but I can think of few other filmmakers who could have made a film about a collection of Earth's greatest heroes and maintained focus so thoroughly on the way that team operated.

Brian De Palma: The Black Dahlia

Building off the moral investigation of film noir that characterized his Femme Fatale, Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia is a grim, stylish examination of the whole genre, not merely one of its most vital foundations. An adaptation of a fictionalization of a real murder committed in Hollywood, The Black Dahlia is ripe for De Palma's approach, but his film is less a deconstruction than a demolition, its elegant, formalist structure nonetheless betraying jagged edges that rip apart film noir. At its face value, the film is perhaps the director's most aesthetically pleasing, with its golden hues and plunging shadows casting Hollywood as its own cinematized fantasy and nightmare. More importantly, however, it is easily De Palma's most profoundly disturbing film, as transgressive in its own way as Body Double, only more formal and emotional. Body Double assaults the senses, but The Black Dahlia hits where it hurts.

Narrated in terse, strained voiceover by Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), The Black Dahlia feels like a noir from the start, even as it introduces its detectives via their alternate gig, boxers for the force. If Femme Fatale delved into the characteristic female type of noir, The Black Dahlia breaks down the male cop archetypes. We meet Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) as Mr. Ice and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) as "Mr. Fire," their accomplishments as police officers nothing more than mere fodder for hyping this exhibition match for the precinct. It casts the two as leading men not merely of the film but of its diegetic world, headliners revered for their crowd-pleasing qualities. This presentation fundamentally weakens the two men as serious police officers, but De Palma will spend the rest of the movie undermining them even more, digging into the grim, unheroic truths beneath their aesthetically captivating shells.

Blanchard and Bleichert make perfect foils for each other. Blanchard, sporting Eckhart's magnificent chin and Aryan hair, looks like the national perception of the "All-American" and resides in a house so big that even his colleagues must want to investigate his tax returns. Bleichert, smaller and brunette, returns to his cheap apartment to care for his dementia-ridden, German immigrant father. Bleichert takes a dive in their fight in order to put his dad in a home, but his voiceovers suggest that he knew Blanchard had to win anyway. For the good of the department, the son of a Jerry was always going to have to get pummeled by Captain America.

Yet Blanchard proves to be a sport about their rigged match, and the two become close friends. The merciless staging of the boxing scenes—filmed by De Palma in ways that make Raging Bull look tame—fades into an equally exaggerated view of camaraderie between the partners. De Palma even suggests that the two have bonded so thoroughly that they practically share the same woman, Blanchard's girlfriend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). But as quickly as De Palma casts Blanchard and Bleichert as the purest form of the buddy cop cliché, he sets about rending them apart. Muttered half-revelations hint at dark secrets that inform the odd sort of love triangle between Kay and the two officers, and when they get drawn into the investigation of the infamous titular murder case, their collective type crumbles.

The discovery of the "Black Dahlia," Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), occurs in the background of a stakeout Blanchard and Bleichert plan for a serial rapist/murderer, and De Palma thickly lays on the grim irony of this white woman's death instantly taking precedent at the precinct over the tailed violator and killer of black children. Bleichert himself tries to get this across to Blanchard, but his partner swiftly forgets about his initial target to focus on the case of this gruesomely disfigured corpse. Bleichert, who perhaps feels at least some form of kinship with the neglected elements of society as a second-generation immigrant, is more repulsed by the idea of children dying regardless of race. Blanchard, though, wants to find the person responsible for the killing of an attractive white woman. And as clues filter in about her sexual past, his dedication morphs into obsession.

If De Palma's previous film tacitly criticized the Nice Guy™faux-chivalric male, The Black Dahlia fully attacks it. Bleichert gradually pieces together Kay's past out of vague, fearful allusions until he realizes she was a prostitute tortured by her pimp. Blanchard rescued her, but as Kay tells Bleichert, he's never slept with her. Male judgment of female sexuality pervades the film, and Blanchard's visceral reaction to sex illustrates this most clearly. His dedication to the Elizabeth Short case exhibits his need to protect women, but also his revulsion of them. The discovery of seedy "audition tapes" featuring Short only further feed his rage. De Palma sprinkles misogyny throughout—Short's own father practically says she deserved what she got for dressing the way she did—but the treatment of Blanchard bitterly deconstructs the seemingly noble impulse to save or avenge the wronged damsel to its roots, which are no less hateful.

Bleichert, on the other hand, lacks Blanchard's fierceness but makes up for it by feeling all the lust Blanchard denies himself. His friendship with Kay flirts with inappropriateness, with Kay's repressed sexuality eking out around the man, whose own feelings are stirred in her presence. However, Bleichert pulls back when he senses himself growing too close, prioritizing his relationship with Blanchard over the one with her. More intriguing, though, is the romance Bleichert ultimately enters into with Elizabeth Short's doppelganger, a pampered rich girl named Madeline Linscott (Hilary Swank) who likes to slum it in some of the lesbian bars Short used to visit. De Palma has long loved his doubles, but what makes Madeline unique is the relative lack of definition of her "real" self. The Black Dahlia is a wisp of memory, a vague outline of corrupted innocence that represents perhaps the most purified and cynical end to the poor rube who came to Hollywood to follow her dream. Madeline is, of course, the reverse; her family helped build Tinseltown and in turn made boatloads of money. But she, like everyone else in her mad clan, is perverse and exploitative, the sort of person who corrupts the corruptible like Short.

But Bleichert doesn't care. He plays Blanchard's id as much as Madeline (a Vertigo reference, perhaps?) plays Elizabeth's, and the two soon enter into a sexual affair. Madeline adheres more faithfully to the femme fatale type that De Palma so brilliantly subverted with his last film, yet he adds a class twist to her schemes that run counter to the usual motive of greed. Instead of manipulating people for personal gain, she seems to do it just to get some kind of thrill. Cloistered in aristocratic misery with her internally squabbling family, Madeline gets her jollies seducing a woman who looks like her, or twisting this hapless detective around her pinky finger. All of the loathing Blanchard pours onto the image of Short would be better directed at this embodiment of all he hates about her, but it's his partner who ends up sticking it to her, in more ways than one.

In contrast to the men and their projection of women, Short herself is complex and heart-wrenching. This is all the more striking given that the audience only "interacts" with her via old those old tapes of grimy audition reels. Kirshner brings out depths of tragedy to the woman in fragmented bursts, playing Short with just enough cynicism to try to seduce her off-camera mocker but too much innocence to do it with any more conviction than a child aping something she should never have been allowed to see. Adamant in her desire to be a star, Short is nevertheless so timid and fragile that the misogynistic accusations thrown at her memory evaporate. A tragic air pervades the film, but elsewhere it is subdued in cold shock. Whenever Kirshner appears in black-and-white, half-heartedly rousing herself against the horrid casting director (De Palma himself, off-screen), her barely contained despair jumps through the diegetic camera and then through De Palma's lens. Her looks feel like addresses to the audience's decency, and the unbearableness of it drives Blanchard insane.

The Black Dahlia is based on the book by James Ellroy, whose L.A. Confidential is regularly cited as one of the great American films of the last 20 years. That film frames Ellroy's unsparingly critical view of Hollywood with a formal perfection, its layered narrative nonetheless neatly arranged and its direction generally crisp and uncomplicated. De Palma's film is precisely the opposite of all that. It's messy, self-annihilating and convoluted. Yet it is De Palma's movie, not Curtis Hanson's, that visually embodies the tone in which Ellroy's writing casts Hollywood. Vilmos Zgimond's gorgeous cinematography uses golden hues and deep shadow to duplicitous effect, at once highlighting the nostalgic and idealistic glory of show business and its jaundiced, rotting underbelly.

In addition, De Palma understands that Hollywood, like the rest of America, was erected by immigrants and frontiersmen, often moves back past noir into German Expression itself. The stylized L.A. never truly settles into any form of realism, and by the end it's morphed into an outright fever dream of despair and confused longing on behalf of Bleichert, whose flat narration prevents one from easily guessing that the whole movie is his delirious nightmare until the final moments. De Palma regularly checks the great Expressionist film The Man Who Laughs, not only as a recurring image but a key plot point. He even throws in his own tragically yearning and disfigured character, and anyone who knows their De Palma will know instantly that such a character simply must be played by William Finley.

The dizzying, extended climax to The Black Dahlia is at once one of the most controlled freak-outs in De Palma's canon and one of the most unsettling. Bleichert, still reeling from a stunning second act finale, falls fully into madness, and the plot suddenly speeds up to accommodate his plummet. The Expressionist touches turn into full swaths of stylized acting and staging, most memorably the grim fate of Madeline's mother, whose gagging dignity made for such great comedy in an earlier dinner scene but suddenly seems frightful and insane. Other influences beging pouring in as well, from a confrontation with Madeline that makes the Vertigo connection more than plausible to what even appears to be a lift from F for Fake.

But nothing compares to the last scene, the most elegant, Romantic obliteration since De Palma caught up to Carlito's Way's foregone conclusion. Bewildered and enraged, Bleichert returns to Kay for comfort, seeking shelter from what he has seen and uncovered. Kay opens the door in a flash of heavenly white, the whore become the Madonna as she beckons the man inside. But before he can move, Bleichert hears the caw of a crow behind him and turns to see Betty Short's mutilated corpse lying on the lawn, illuminated by Kay's glow, the object of his ecstasy also a reminder of his agony. In that moment, Bleichert finds himself frozen between equally garish reminders of his two biggest failures, to the case, and to his friend and partner. It's worth noting that when Bleichert shakes his head and the ghastly image of Short disappears, so too does Kay's aura. This flash of lucidity breaks up the subjective haze of the film's last 15-20 minutes, yet Bleichert's conscious decision to retreat from the world with Kay may be more unsettling than any of the stylized actions that preceded it.

Earlier I mentioned the stylistic ways that the more graceful Black Dahlia diverged from the full-on porn assault of Body Double, yet if anything, it's the 2006 film that is more merciless. Body Double spits on what Hollywood had become; as Bleichert enters the house with Kay and shuts himself off from the horror around him, The Black Dahlia makes clear that Hollywood was always the most loathsome, horrifying place in the world.