Sucker Punch IMAX

Wizard of Oz on Steroids

Director: Zack Snyder

Writer: Zack Snyder, Steve Shibuya

Stars: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, Jamie Chung, Carla Gugino, Jon Hamm, Scott Glenn, Oscar Isaac

RANT: Went to my first IMAX experience on Long Island today. It wasn't at the Westbury Theater that I have been raving about the last two weeks. Instead, I went to the Deer Park outlets Regal Theater with a guy from work, splitting the driving distance to be fair. $18 a piece later, Zach Snyder's new film illuminated the over sized silver screen.

SYNOPSIS: A young girl is sent to a mental institution after her mother's death and her step-father's abuse. In order to cope, she retreats into a fantasy world where she is a warrior on a quest to escape to freedom.

Zach Snyder brings his highly surreal style to the screen with his latest effort, Sucker Punch. Director of 300 and Watchman, Snyder is a virtuoso at adapting graphic novelizations into cinematic eye candy. This time, he takes a new direction by creating his own world of fantasy, femme fatales and firepower.

Sucker Punch focuses on a young woman, nicknamed Baby Doll (Emily Browning) by the other women in an institute for the criminally insane. Baby Doll finds herself committed by her stepfather who was after her mother's estate after she finds him attacking and killing her sister. Once on the inside, she concocts a plan of escape using symbolic and literal objects - a map, fire, a knife, a key, and a sacrifice. A la Inception, Baby Doll builds a fantasy reality with deeper fantasies whenever she and their cohorts - Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung) - need to find and secure one of the artifacts imperative to their escape.

While the plot may be a little on the weak side, Sucker Punch is a Matrix- and Wizard of Oz-inspired visual spectacle. Loaded with references and homages to Sin City, a slew of Japanese anime like Dragonball Z, The Wizard of Oz, and Girl, Interrupted, and his own canon of work, Zack Snyder builds a world - several worlds, in fact - for his femme fatales to battle in. Baby Doll and her friends square off against steam punk, clockwork zombie Nazis in World War II trenches, battle against medieval knights, dragons and LOTR-style orcs in chain mail against the backdrop of a stone spire castle, and rage against mechanized i-robots guarding a bomb on a bullet train to ignite once it passes into a skyscraper city - and more!

Snyder mixes so many different eras into the film. While in the trenches of World War II, Baby Doll and pals have samurai swords and new millennium firepower. While in medieval times, they fly around in a B-52. On their way to catch the futuristic bullet train, they pursue in a Vietnam era chopper. Even the fantasy world that Baby Doll creates to deal with the everyday of Lennox House recalls an era of the 40s and 50s with splashes of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

But even the more subdued scenes are rich in cinematic style. One in particular - the dressing room scene - is distracting and marvelous as the camera pans from the players to their reflections, to reflections that become the players, to reflections again - all with a single rolling 360 degree pan. Excellent work.

The battles make great use of music, as if Tarantino lent his ear to the scores. The film and soundtrack boasts eerily re-recorded tracks like Sweet Dreams, White Rabbit, and a I Want It All / We Will Rock You mash up - perfect fodder for the ears while Snyder invades our eyes with full-on cinematic whipped cream.

The geeks will be impressed and satiated. They will probably go see it twice, I know I will. But Sucker Punch is not for everyone. "Girl Power" will draw some young women to the audience. Scantily clad women with over sized guns and swords will bring the 15 to 30 year old males. The aforementioned and everything else will bring the comic book readers. And while I loved it, I can see patrons with more discriminating tastes may be disappointed.

WORTH: Matinee and Blu-Ray

Limitless

Not Quite Limitless

Director: Neil Burger

Writer: Leslie Dixon (screenplay), Alan Glynn (novel)

Stars: Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, Abbie Cornish, Andrew Howard, Anna Friel, Johnny Whitworth

RANT: Me and the boys from work quested to the College Point movie theater to take in Limitless. The theater is not the Westbury Regal I frequent and love, but it'll do in a pinch - especially since its 2 blocks from work. A quick Wendy's dinner and we were off!

SYNOPSIS: Loser Eddie Morra can't keep his girlfriend or write the first word in his novel, until he takes a top-secret drug that expands his brain to its limit - and beyond.

Director of The Lucky Ones and The Illusionist, Neil Burger, takes a screenplay written by Pay It Forward scribe Leslie Dixon from a novel by Alan Glynn entitled The Dark Fields. Limitless, as it is now called, revolves around Eddie Morra, a struggling writer and human being who is presented the gift of a lifetime - a pill that allows the user to access 100% of their brain.

The movie is presented with narrative from Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) a la Sunset Boulevard as he stands on the edge of a balcony several stories up in a high rise apartment, ready to make the leap to his death. What has brought this man to the brink? An experimental drug, MDT-48, which, in the words of Eddie, grants the user a 4-digit IQ. Able to write his novel in 4 days and turn a paltry sum of money into $1.2 million through undetected stock market patterns, Eddie sees this wonder drug as his ticket to bigger and better things. But Carl Van Loon (Robert DeNiro) says to Eddie, "...you haven't earned this gifts", implying that using his super-computer brain without paying his dues will only lead to arrogance, entitlement and corrupt behavior.

Limitless is shot alternately with rich colors schemes and muted washed out tones. The intro title sequence is kinetic and rich, alluding to what the world must be like when using an enhancement substance like MDT-48. Some of the cinematography is disorienting, which also lets the moviegoer feel what its like to be on MDT-48.

While the protagonist is Eddie Morra, the villain of the story could be many people. Throughout the film, Eddie struggles against many obstacles. The first is his own inability to be a better person before the pills. Then he becomes involved in more than one murder that quickly dissipates into plot obscurity. Robert DeNiro's Van Loon could be the bad guy but Morra uses Van Loon's resources to get ahead financially and to learn the finance game. There is even a loan shark, Gennady (Andrew Howard) that wants his money back, as well as a taste of the drug. But at the end of the day, the real antagonist is addiction. Addiction to wealth, superiority, greed, and drugs all play their part.

The story loses strength and its way at times during the film, but finds its way back again as Eddie realizes that there is more at stake than the limitless potential of pharmaceuticals. The audience must have been on MDT-48 as well because some parts of the script on screen were obvious and easily discerned. Cooper's character Eddie says that he sees 50 scenarios, but an intelligent viewer will see much of the film unfold before it actually does.

Limitless is a neat techno-thriller with a couple cool ingredients. You have Bradley Cooper with his cool charm and sharp blue eyes, Robert DeNiro with an admiration and envy of a man he can't figure out, and a plight as to how Eddie will survive on the pills without burning out or killing himself or survive once the pills run out. If you have no other films on your docket, give Limitless a try. Otherwise, you can wait.

WORTH: Matinee or Netflix

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