THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.

GRADE: A -
Starring Armie hammer, Henry Cavill, Alicia Vikander and Hugh Grant
Directed by Guy Ritchie
Rated PG-13

The idea of a big screen version of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been floating around Hollywood for well over a decade now, and at first glance it seems a bit late for this particular adaptation as we've long since moved past 1960's nostalgia and are actually just finishing up the 80's and moving to the 90's. But ultra chic 60's style never goes completely out of fashion, and it turns out to be an inspired match to the frenetic yet chic visually sensibilities of director Guy Ritchie.

The story begins at the height of the cold war, with suave American agent Napoleon Solo (Cavill) in East berlin,  rescuing Gaby Teller (Alicia Vikander), the beautiful daughter of a kidnapped German scientist. Complicating matters is a Russian agent, Illya Kuryakin (Armie Hammer), Solo's equal in skill, intelligence, resourcefulness and manly prettiness. Soon, Solo and Kuryakin are assigned by their respective governments to work together with Gaby to infiltrate a criminal organization, and the expected rivalries and romantic complications ensue.

As with the majority of Hollywood spy flicks, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. is filled with enough complicated plot twists to distract you from just how thin the story really is.  If pressed to explain the plot, you probably couldn't, and the movie doesn't always have the strongest sense of flow. But it does have lots of exciting action set pieces, laugh out loud comedy, and a dazzling sense of style. Director Ritchie actually tones down a bit of his more indulgent tendencies, but is clearly having the time of his life with the hip style of the film, creating some dazzling and inventive moments, including what we think is likely to be the funniest scene of year.

Perhaps the greatest asset of the film is the

performances of the two leads, who are keenly aware that they need to prove they are more than a cape and a mask and don't just rise to the challenge but embrace it the opportunity with zeal and gusto. Cavill and Hammer have excellent chemistry, with Cavill doing his best Robert Vaughn voice in a delightfully campy performance that shows a perfect sense of comic timing, and Hammer potentially reviving a flagging career by not only finally getting a lead role that allows him to show some versatility along with his screen presence, but really hitting it out of the park and making it the most enjoyable star turn of the summer. With the two of them Ritchie has created a buddy duo slightly different from his squabbling, codependent Holmes and Watson, but one nearly as entertaining. It would be a big mistake to write off Cavill and Hammer as mere sex symbols. They show serious comic talent here. And Alicia Vikander gives a delightful turn, coming on the heals of her breakout role in Ex Machina, getting the most out of her Audrey Hepburn as a tomboy appeal, and if this performs at the box office we can expect to see more of her (not that we didn't see just about all of her in the afforementioned film.). Hugh Grant also adds a great deal of presence in his supporting turn as Waverley, Solo's boss.

This has been a big year for spy flicks, and we still have two more potential greats to come, but with The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Ritchie has created a stylish comic triumph that may not feel quite as utterly inspired as Kingman did at it's best moments, but makes up for it by being a lot less immature and self consciously in your face.

FANTASTIC FOUR

GRADE: D
Starring Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebell
Screenplay by Simon Kinberg and Jeremy Slater and Josh Trank
Directed by Josh Trank
Rated PG - 13 (violence, profanity)

Reviewed by Paul Gibbs and Patrick Gibbs

The creators of  Terminator Genysis and Pixels can breathe a sigh of relief, because neither of these remain as contenders to be remembered as the biggest dud of summer 2015. Director Tim Story can find satisfaction in knowing that his poorly regarded 2005 version is now (by default at least) the good Fantastic Four movie. And 20th Century Fox can start looking for new franchise plans, because it's nearly impossible to believe that their new reboot of Fantastic Four will lead to the shared universe franchise they want. It's always possible for there to be a huge disconnect between critics and audiences, along the lines of the reception for the Transformers films, but Michael Bay's robot epics provide enough F/X action and vulgar/over-the-top comedy to keep a large audience entertained. Fantastic Four offers a story that goes nowhere and the most anti-climactic final battle in super hero movie history, and very little action getting there. And while the cast is engaging, the characters are decidedly not.

The story begins in 2007, with grade school versions of our protagonist Reed Richards getting in trouble at school for stating his desire to build a teleportation device. But anyone who has ever watched  The Disney Channel during the day knows he'll pull it off, and when we cut to a teenage Reed (Miles Teller)  in the present day (let us detour for a moment to express the depression caused by how old it made us feel that they only had to flash back to 2007 to show us Reed's childhood), where Reed and his best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) get in trouble again at the science fair, but Reed is recruited by the brilliant Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his brilliant and beautiful adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara) to join them at a sort of government run special high school for mad scientists (it's like a cross between Fame and Operation Paper Clip), where they will use Reed' teleportation device to travel to another dimension (Ben gets to stay at regular dumb kid high school, where the Principal is literally Homer Simpson). This leads to an interminably long build up, where Reed and Sue are eventually joined by Sue's brother Johnny (Michael B. Jordan) and the school's previous supreme genius, Viktor Von Doom (Toby Kebell), and at what feels like two hours into the 100 minute film, traveling to the other dimension becomes a version of the traditional Fantastic Four origin story, as they gain mysterious powers. And then, after an endless set up, we suddenly see the caption "1 Year Later." Seriously. The point when they actually get their powers, that's when the filmmakers decide to skip over stuff. That makes sense. But don't assume that they jump ahead so we can see more of them as superheroes saving the world, because there's far too much brooding and set up left to do.

It's not that this is a bad Fantastic Four movie (which it is), or a bad superhero movie (which it really is), it's that it's a bad movie. Not only are we forced to endure a seemingly endless set up for embarrassingly little payoff, but the film has been so chopped up in post-production that it has nothing resembling narrative flow. And there's no warmth or development between the characters, which is a complete waste of a very talented cast which includes some of the finest young actors in The Dark Knight can be a masterpiece played as dark, brooding and melancholy (though it did have moments of humor), because that's Batman. But the approach doesn't work for these characters, and the result leaves the similarly serious and highly divisive Man of Steel seeming like an unqualified triumph by comparison. If this movie delivered on any one of story, character or action, it might be worth recommending as a simple summer diversion. But it fails so completely on every one of those levels that it's hard to think of anyone we'd encourage to see it, even for the sake of completeness of geekdom. At its best, the film plays like a mediocre pilot for a TV series that you hope will settle in on the second episode, but it's not worth waiting two years for a sequel nobody is really going to care about. And the TV series comparison forces us to note how much more complete, satisfying and large scale every single episode of the CW's The Flash series has been than what is supposed to be a feature film.

           The characters are dull and not the least bit engaging, which because this is a waste of a very talented cast. Bell and Kebell, our personal favorites, are particularly underused, and it's actually kind of heartbreaking to watch Miles Teller try to figure out how he can personally still make this his big break. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the movie is giving Sue Storm so little to do that Kate Mara manages to be less interesting than Jessica Alba. And of course the fanboy uproar over the "colorblind" casting of Jordan turns out to be a whole lot of noise over nothing as it neither detracts  from or adds to  the film.

Director Josh Trank has made a movie that is so stifled in its scale, being limited to taking place almost entirely in a lab, that it feels disconnected to any sort of larger world, and our heroes are forced to save the world without seeming to have ever even visited it. It begins to feel almost like a student film that didn't have time to leave the studio during class period so the Professor ran out and got a couple of B-roll shots of The Thing beating up tanks during his lunch hour and they decided that was enough.  And while it's understandable that Fox was looking to separate this version from the jokey 2005 film, which lkayed like a big screen episode of Friends ("The One Where They All Got Super Powers") by going with a more serious tone, an almost complete lack of humor is a major weakness for a superhero film (and makes the moments where they try to work in all of the requisite catch phrases genuinely painful, especially the badly thought out explanation behind "it's clobberin' time.).

Production of the film has become infamous for behind the scenes troubles and reshoots, so much so that it's widely accepted that Trank was fired from his planned Star Wars Anthology gig, despite the "official story" that he quit. And Fox apparently took control in post-production. It seems pretty clear that Trank believed he was making a much smarter, edgier movie than he really was, and that Fox decided "if it can't be good, at least it can be short."

Unless you are such a Mavel fan that you simply can't stand the idea of not seeing a Fantastic Four movie right away, wait until it hits the dollar theater or even Redbox. There are so many better films out there to see right now, whether it's an action blockbuster like Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation or an indie gem like Mr. Holmes or a an animated instant classic like Inside Out, that it would be a shame to waste your finite number of movie going dollars on this one. And there's no reason to encourage Fox to go back to this particular well (just let the rights lapse to Marvel and the Four can be minor characters in Avengers: Age of Overkill). Staying home and watching the 2005 version or its sequel would be preferable. Even tracking down the notorious 1994 Roger Corman version on YouTube is likely to at least give you some solid Mystery Science Theater 3000 laughs. We didn't find the 2015 Fantastic Four to be goofy enough to enjoy as a bad movie, or good enough to enjoy as even a mediocre one. It's the sort of unqualified failure that's actually much rarer in Hollywood today than you might think, and while it's tempting to place the blame either squarely on the shoulders of either Trank or 20th-Century Fox, too much went wrong here to place all of the blame on anyone, or to be sure who is responsible for which bad decision.

The end result is that, though Trank described his approach to the film by saying he was trying to make "an Amblin movie from the '80's," the closest it comes to that is feeling a lot like any number of episodes of Amazing Stories that had not yet been fully developed into an actual idea but got shot anyway because they had to air something.