Captain Marvel

Rating: 2/5

So Captain Marvel is here. I have never really followed the comic book character, as she never seemed terribly impactful on the Marvel Universe when I actually read comics. Still, I was hoping, based on a pretty good track record, that this would be another fun Marvel flick. I was also hoping it would be one in the eye for the internet troll brigade.

It does have fun in it, though it's a little hard to find at times. The humor mostly works, some story turns are interesting, and most of the effects (other than Agent "Uncanny Valley" Coulson) are decent. But overall ... I just didn't dig it.

Maybe it's because the titular Captain is not a particularly engaging or sympathetic character. She's a quippy smartass from the get-go, and she never really changes very much. Despite life-altering experiences, her life isn't really very altered. She went from being a hotshot fighter pilot to a hotshot space warrior. She lost her memories, but that doesn't seem terribly important to the plot, nor does it really inform her character very much.

So many opportunities for a deeper, more interesting movie existed here, but were abandoned. Characters had only sketches of motivation, and the most serious moral choice in the film (whether or not a mother with a child should risk her life, possibly leaving that child motherless) had a frustratingly unsatisfying resolution. The movie seemed afraid to make any hard choices, which is almost exactly the opposite of the recent years' storylines of the Marvel Comics character (as I understand them upon a brief wikipedial review).

Honestly, I struggle for anything to say about this movie, other than my primary impression was that I found myself waiting for it to be over rather than engaged or excited. I do not remember feeling this way about any other Marvel film, even the lower-tier second sequels to Iron Man and Thor.

Well ... maybe Thor 2.

Five Things Wrong with Avatar that Aren't the Plot

Because I like commenting on movies I saw a couple years ago and thought were kinda "meh." Also because I forgot to post this at the time.

1. Cameron missed the opportunity to create something more profound when Jake communes with Aywa. I would have liked to hear something, anything significant to Jake himself rather than just crowd noises signifying the spirits of Na'vi past. How about his brother's voice? I think Grace's voice would have been too cheesy.
   
2. Who the hell watches their brother be cremated? Here's a hint, Jim: No one.
   
3. Who the hell pitches a job to a guy while he watches his brother being cremated? For a hint, see #2.
   
4. Col. Quartich could really have used a tiny shred of humanity. He was such a cartoonish villain that a twirlable mustache seemed like an omission. Contrast that with the equally violent and genocidal Lt. Coffey from The Abyss: despite everything he did you actually could feel a tiny bit of empathy for him right before he was crushed to death.
   
5. I think we needed to see Jake tame the Toruk, or at least be told why it was considered such a big deal. The way it was presented made it seem a lot easier than when he tamed the Ikran (the banshee). Hell, even the Pa'li (the horse-thing) seemed more difficult to master.

Capsule Reviews

Here are several movies I've seen and been too lazy to blog about, collected in one half-assed burst, and in no particular order:

The Fountain - Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, 2006
This is a very beautiful movie with an amazing score by Clint Mansell. It is a surrealistic exploration of a man's quest for immortality, not for himself, but for the woman he loves. It's told as both a semi-linear narrative of a research doctor attempting to find a treatment for brain tumors and stumbling upon much more, and much less, and as a story-within-the-story, of a conquistador seeking the Fountain of Youth/Tree of Life. The conquistador portions have some action, but the film is very much in the vein of Solaris or 2001 in being a sci-fi/fantasy movie but not an action movie. I found it interesting, but slow and a bit repetitive. Overall, I'd give it a B, though it is really a matter of taste.

50/50 - Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, 2011
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll yell "shut up, asshole" at Seth Rogen's character repeatedly. Angelica Huston and Phillip Baker Hall both give great supporting performances, as does Anna Kendrick, though she seems to be in danger of early typecasting. There are a couple of stumbles, including a metaphor that gets picked up, bobbled, and forgotten. 40/50


Tucker and Dale vs. Evil - Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, and Katrina Bowden, 2010
The premise, that a pair of hillbillies are terrorized by college co-eds who believe they are psycho killers, is pretty ingenious, and the movie more or less manages to carry it off. Tyler Labine is extremely endearing as Dale, and Alan Tudyk's Tucker -- a cynical, wise hillbilly with a simple dream of his own vacation home -- is who you can't help but feel sorry for. The supporting cast is a bit of a let-down, and the villain of the film, a preppie asshole played by Jessie Moss, is way too cartoonishly nasty at times, but the title characters really do make the film a hell of a lot of fun to watch. B+


The Guard - Brendon Gleeson and Don Cheadle, 2011
Way too much "hey, hey, hey, look how quirky these crazy Irish people are," for me. Gleeson is always fun to watch but Cheadle is hit or miss, and largely miss here, for me. The villains of the film -- a trio of off-beat drug dealer refugees from a Guy Ritchie movie -- just don't work that well for me. I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I actually did. It certainly has moments, but I think it's pretty overrated as well. It gets a lot of comparisons to In Bruges, mainly because of Gleeson's presence in both, but In Bruges is a much, much better film, thanks largely to Ralph Fiennes playing a broader, nastier, funnier villain than the three drug dealers here put together. C

Battle: Los Angeles

Rating: Close Encounter of the 1/3 Kind

Dumb science fiction is sometimes fun. The first Transformers film was idiotic, but a real blast to watch. Hell, even Star Wars is pretty dumb, but it's one of my favorites.

And the science in a movie can be really terrible and still allow for a great time. The Matrix, for instance, makes no sense whatsoever, but I love it.

But even good science couldn't save a shitty movie, and Battle: Los Angeles is one of the shittiest I've sat through in quite some time. Laughable science is the least of its problems.

Taking its cue from a multitude of "bad idea" science fiction, the invading alien force eschews any sort of logical plan in their invasion of earth. In point of fact, they seem to have read the playbook of every poorly-planned invasion of our planet since the dawn of cinema. Two films in particular seem to have inspired them:

Independence Day: "Hey, let's rig up all our spaceships so they take energy and commands from one central hub, which the humans can't possibly destroy in a heroic third-act push."

Signs: "Sure we came light-years to attack this planet, and our technology is vastly beyond anything humans can even comprehend, but how about we run around on foot and kill them one by one?"

Why are the aliens here, you ask? Well, to save you the trouble of watching this ham-fisted, dull, and horribly unimaginative movie, I'll just tell you: They want to steal our water. Because, you see, Earth has it in liquid form.

Yes, you heard that right. These aliens are advanced enough to haul hundreds of thousands of tons of soldiers and equipment (at the very least) across the vast emptiness of space, and ruthless enough to obliterate an entire native intelligent species, because they apparently don't know how to melt ice.

Alright, so they need liquid water (a preposterous amount of it, as one idiotic "science-y" bit would have us believe that the ocean levels are dropping perceptibly in the few hours the aliens have been attacking). So, of course, the FIRST THING the aliens do when they have landed all their invasion forces in the ocean, is tromp out on land, attacking every major coastal city in the world (apparently --though only a dozen or so are actually mentioned, San Diego, San Francisco, and L.A. all get the treatment, so it has to be pretty widespread).

I know, I know, movies like this aren't about logic or interesting ideas -- they're about entertainment, right? Well, maybe movies like this, but not this one. This one commits every major sin a movie like it can possibly commit.

It is populated entirely by forgettable, one-dimensional soldier stereotypes (the rookie, the tough chick, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the inexperienced officer, and, of course, the grizzled veteran -- in this case, Aaron Eckhart providing the grizzle). And alongside them are two children and two civilians, none of whom do we care about even a little. It wants to be like Aliens, where each soldier had a personality and, while we may not have become too attached to them, we at least knew their names, but instead it is like ... well, like every bad attempt to copy Aliens of the last two decades.

Its true sin, however, is that it is booooring. The battle scenes are Blackhawk Down-wannabe kinetic craziness, but it never manages to be even slightly convincing. The characters do a lot of talking that is clearly supposed to be "character building" but really just seems to lengthen the amount of time we wait for anything to happen.

One scene that seems to go on forever involves a field vivisection of a wounded alien in an attempt to find it's "weak spot." The intrepid soldiers divine that they should shoot the aliens "just to the right of where the heart would be," which one would assume would be sort of the default place you'd shoot anything that looked vaguely like a person. They proceed to tell the rest of the marines this important tip, and then everyone proceeds to ignore it for the idiotic time filler it is and run them over with trucks instead.

And the aliens are boring, too. We see a grand total of maybe five variations on the attacking forces: soldier, leader, "tank thing," aerial drone, and mothership. We never learn anything of any significance about the aliens, except that they are terrible at planning and carrying out invasions. They have no personality at all and they don't even look particularly good.

I've heard that the company that made the reputedly-terrible Skyline ripped this movie off somehow, but honestly I don't see anything at all worth ripping off.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Rating: 34/50 Stars

Superhero movies are getting awfully tired, but Marvel Studios will be damned if it doesn't roll em out while the rolling is good. Thor and Iron Man 2 were ... less than great, but Captain America is, at least somewhat, a return to form. It's no Iron Man, and it's not quite the equal of X-Men: First Class, it's still one of the better Marvel comics adaptations.

Well, it's no Spider-Man, either. And no X-Men. And, really, it's no X-Men 2 ... hmm.

Anybody who isn't familiar with the titular Captain will probably enjoy this movie a lot less than Iron Man, even before you take into account the fact that Chris Evans is no Robert Downey, Jr. Still, it manages to avoid the Origin > Crisis > Climax ladder that most superhero movies are so fond of, giving Cap a fairly touching origin (thanks mainly to a fine performance by Stanley Tucci as the brains behind the experiment that turns 90-pound weakling Steve Rogers into Chris Evans) and then, instead of hurling him directly into the fight against evil, thrusting him awkwardly into the role of a USO poster boy and War Bond shill.

Eventually, however, duty does call, in the form of a friend caught behind the lines and imprisoned by the villainous Hydra, led by the sinister Red Skull (Hugo Weaving, who chews the scenery like crazy, but what's a brother gonna do? He's a crazy Nazi scientist!)

Of course the Red Skull was the first person to go through the super-soldier treatment that created Cap, but the movie nearly unforgivably has Weaving utter variations of the line, "We are not so different, you and I!" Seriously, Hollywood, there should be an ordinance against that appearing in any screenplay, along with, "You fool! You'll kill us all!" and "You don't understand what you're dealing with!" -- both of which occur in this film as well, in various forms. (Note to self, deduct a few more stars.)

Still and all, CA:TfA is a fairly fun ride, though it suffers from a weak ending that really only serves to set up next year's The Avengers, which also has a trailer attached after the credits of this film.

Kung Fu Panda 2

Rating: A Furious 4 out of 5

It almost seems like there is a set amount of quality out there for Dreamworks Animation and Pixar to wrestle over, and Dreamworks is managing to tip the scale their way in fits and starts over the past couple of years. The first Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon can stand up with the better Pixar films, while Pixar itself seems to have gone off-track with sequel-itis.

If Pixar is determined to go full-throttle on sequels (as Toy Story 3 and the upcoming Cars 2 and Monsters University would seem to indicate), they could do a lot worse than Kung Fu Panda 2. It's a solid sequel to a great animated feature, and while I don't think it quite has the same emotional impact as the first film, it has the same great humor and fantastic character and action animation.

Now firmly ensconced as the Dragon Warrior and companion of the Furious Five, Po (Jack Black) is a Kung Fu superhero and champion of the Valley of Peace. After a beautiful intro sequence introduces us to the sinister peacock Shen (Gary Oldman), it's only a matter of time before Po and friends are tasked by Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) with stopping Shen's plan to use gunpowder to render kung fu irrelevant and conquer all of China.

Complicating this is the fact that Po recognizes the symbols on the armor of Shen's wolf minions as an enigmatic touchstone to memories of his childhood and the loss of his parents. When he asks his father, Mr. Ping (James Hong) about his origins, we are treated to a story of adoption both humorous and touching. The animation of the character of Mr. Ping is fantastic, especially considering he gets none of the flashy kung-fu sequences other characters shine in, and is entirely a character performance.

Those kung-fu sequences are as fantastic and thrilling as those in the first film were, particularly any moments in which Shen (Gary Oldman) is on screen. His movements are strange and beautiful, his deadliness as clear as his borderline madness.

The comedy is strong, with well-placed goofiness breaking up serious character moments. One of the best involves Po delivering pithy, dramatic lines from slightly too far away for anyone to hear him clearly.

If the sequel falls a little short of the original, it's due at least in part to the very diminished role of Hoffman's Master Shifu, who barely shows up after a beautiful sequence early on. I also missed the incredible performance of Ian McShane as Tai Lung, the unfortunately deceased villain of the original. Still, Oldman is very good, and the supporting voices of Angelina Jolie (Tigress), David Cross (Crane), Seth Rogan (Mantis), Lucy Liu (Viper), and Jackie Chan (Monkey) continue to please. Jean-Claude Van Damme is stunt cast as Master Croc, with no more than a handful of lines, but Victor Garber and Dennis Haysbert give excellent vocal performances as Master Thundering Rhino and Master Storming Ox, respectively.

Thor

Rating: Meh.

As comic book adaptations go, Thor is fairly middle of the road. About as good as X-Men 3, I suppose. Faint praise for a faintly praiseworthy film. Director Kenneth Branagh has taken the nearly 40-year-old Marvel Comics version of the god of thunder and done ... fairly well with such a screwy premise.

To its credit, the scenes in the otherworldly realms of Asgard and Jotunheim are pretty interesting, and some of the action in these sequences are exciting. Unfortunately, they are bogged down by some pretty hard-to-swallow dialog and a few strange moments where actors almost seem to break character intentionally.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth), in particular, goes from an angry, somewhat thick bruiser personality to a witty charmer seemingly at random. This is even more jarring once he is exiled to earth, stripped of his powers for being an idiot. In one scene, he is a boorish barbarian, shattering his mug and demanding more coffee. In another, he's a smiling, somewhat condescending superior being, explaining how science and magic are one in the same. And in another, he marches into a pet store and demands a horse, or a dog or cat large enough to ride. It's a very mixed bag.

Thor also suffers by shying away from the ugly aspects of its main character via a complete character reversal that seems to take place over about 48 hours. If humility and decency are this easy to pick up, it's hard to understand why Odin (Anthony Hopkins) didn't send his son downtown a long time ago.

Hemsworth does give a creditable performance as Thor, though, and Hopkins is surprisingly good as Odin, overcoming some seriously silly costume choices and dialogue to give his character great dignity. Tom Hiddleston, as Thor's brother god Loki, is also good, though he does become more cartoonish and generic as the film rolls into its third act.

In contrast, Natalie Portman, as Thor's love interest Jane Foster, is pretty weak. Portman can't shoulder all the blame here, though, as her character is almost completely superfluous to the plot. We are clearly meant to believe there is much more of a connection between Foster and Thor than is ever shown on screen. They make eyes at each other and share a kiss, but the movie earns no real emotion in that relationship. Stellan Skarsgaard, as Foster's mentor Dr. Erik Selvig, is considerably more interesting than Portman, and the part is better written.

Thor's fellow Asgardian adventurers, particularly Ray Stevenson as Vostagg, are entertaining, and could have used more screen time. Clark Gregg reprises his role as Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D., providing a touchstone with the other films in the Marvel franchise, having played the same character in Iron Man and its sequel. He's fine, in a somewhat unchallenging role.

We'll see Thor again, next year, in The Avengers, but it's hard to see how he will stand up next to the vastly more entertaining and nuanced character of Tony Stark/Ironman that Robert Downey, Jr. will be bringing to the table. Hemsworth may be fine, but the character of Thor is a bore.

9

Rating: 7.5/9

9 doesn't exactly improve upon the amazing short film that it is based upon, but that's hardly surprising. Shorts extended to feature length rarely do (District 9 being a notable exception). The main shortcoming of the feature is that the haunting stillness of the short, which featured no voice acting at all, is replaced here by ... well, too many voices.

It's been said many times, but bears repeating: Please, Hollywood, for the love of God, we do not care if movie stars do the voices in animated features, just get someone who can do them well.

That's not to say that the voice cast of 9 is bad. Christopher Plummer is quite good, in fact. But Elijah Wood and John C. Reilly are just ... themselves. They have distinctive, easily-recognized voices, but they are not the voices of the characters, they are the voices of the actors. Jennifer Connelly, on the other hand, isn't even distinctive. She is serviceable, but why on earth would you pay to have Jennifer Connelly in a movie in which you don't actually get to see her? Even worse is Crispin Glover, not because he does a bad job, but because his character has, at most, six to ten lines, none of which were memorable or required a shaky-creepy psycho voice. It could have been anyone.

As to the rest of the film, it was beautifully animated and fun, if a bit light on plot. It was more of an extended couple of sequences, really, though that's pretty much par for the course in action movies. Lots of leaping away from explosions and dangling from high places, and smashing scenery and, "We can't just leave them to die!" and "Nooo!" etc.

It depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which the machines have revolted (again) and killed off all the humans. The only survivors are nine little burlap robot-things, the only purpose of which seems to be to be the protagonists of the film. It's pretty standard action movie stuff once you get past the unique style, but the style is gorgeous and interesting.

Note: The monsters that stalk these little sack people are pretty scary, and they shriek a lot, and about as loudly as the sound system will allow, so think twice before taking little kids to see it.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Rating: Better than you expect, if your expectations are very low.

There's a weird vicious circle going on with this movie. Many people have rightly said that, if your expectations aren't too high, this is an entertaining film. But that faint praise has a way of raising one's expectations of the movie, which is not a good thing.

To say that this is a stupid film is almost unnecessary -- if you've seen the trailer, you've heard Dennis Quaid solemnly intone: "This is General Hawk. The mission is a go!"

That said, it may be more instructive to mention that this movie is so stupid that it quite literally has characters in submarines fleeing from sinking ice after an explosion breaks up an ice pack.

As a frenetic popcorn movie made up of almost nothing but battle and chase scenes, it certainly isn't boring, but so much of the film is CGI -- and not very good CGI for the most part -- that it really feels like you're watching a cartoon.

This, of course, takes it back to its source material, which was pretty stupid in itself. The movie derives virtually none of its inspiration from the underrated Marvel Comics title of the 80s, rather paying what little respect it does to the silly cartoon series of the same era.

Even there, though, it is only a superficial nod. None of the character dynamics even from that shallow kids cartoon have survived into this film. Of the cartoon's three principal characters present here, only Duke has any substantial part to play. Scarlett is a sidekick and romantic interest for Ripcord (who, if he had any story outside of the toy line, I don't remember it, yet is here placed in a starring role).

Snake Eyes, the iconic mute ninja/commando of the franchise, is present, but story-less. Other than some flashbacks of his rivalry with evil ninja Storm Shadow, he is a complete cipher. He's not even mute in this version, merely having taken a vow of silence. Everything tragic and mysterious about his character has been completely excised, and that pretty much goes for every other aspect of the franchise as well.

Stephen Sommers clearly understands the G.I. Joe property about as well as he did the classic Universal monsters he co-opted for Van Helsing (i.e. not at all), but at least this time around he's managed to maintain a better momentum, with fewer groan-inducing moments. Some of the action sequences are quite spectacular, particularly one in which the bad guys attempt to dislodge Snake Eyes from atop their vehicle by ... well, you kinda have to see it.

And, honestly, if you don't see it on a big screen, it's almost certainly not worth seeing, because it's a BIG movie.

Brick

Rating: 9 out of 10. Not bad, shamus, but you forgot one thing...

I read a review in the Onion AV Club's "New Cult Classics" series praising this little-seen but much-praised 2005 movie, and I'm very glad I did.

Brick is nothing more or less than a film noir set in a high school. The dialogue is almost entirely done with a Chandler-esque sensibility, including some slang that will leave you puzzled if you're not familiar with the genre. Even if you are, the dialogue can be a bit hard to hear at times, so you may have to resort to subtitles now and then.

Brendan (Joseph Gordon Levitt) is a high school loner who we first see staring at the body of his ex-girlfriend Emily, lying face down in a storm drain. The movie then flashes back two days to give us a little background on the situation, including a tearful and mysterious phone call between the two in which Emily asks Brendan for help but then hangs up in fear of an approaching car.

After discovering Emily's body, Brendan makes the dubious choice of hiding it, in order to pursue his own investigation/vengeance before the police get in the way. His style of investigation is pure Phillip Marlowe -- he gets his ass kicked a lot, but never loses his wry sense of humor or smartass dialogue. He doesn't have all the answers, but he'll get them sooner or later.

Some great supporting performances are also featured, including Richard Roundtree as a tough vice principal and a fantastic Lukas Haas as a sinister underworld figure.

The standout, though, is Gordon-Levitt, who sells Brendan as a troubled high school loner and a flatfoot right out of a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler story with amazing results. He's actually required to show a lot more range of emotion than the characters Brendan is inspired by, but does so without missing a beat.

Up

Rating: 95/99 Luftbaloons

Bit of a Fargo experience here.

I mean, yeah, it was a very good movie, but my expectations were so high from the "Jesus has come again and lo! He is playing at a cineplex near you"-level of praise the movie received that I was only very pleased, rather than reduced to a slobbering mass of moviegoer.

On the other hand, I keep hearing that it's "almost as good as Wall-E," which is retarded because it's considerably better than Wall-E.

Wall-E had a fantastic first act followed by a merely okay second and third. Up has a fantastic first act followed by a hysterical second act and a spectacular third.

Tiny gripe:

To say a movie about a man who flies his house to South America using children's helium balloons stretches credibility may sound a bit stupid, but I did find myself pulled out of the film a few times by "unrealistic" bits. For the most part, these involved heroic and/or acrobatic actions on the part of the elderly protagonist who, despite the fact that he needs a cane to walk (slowly) can, when called to action, support the weight of a very fat kid and two large animals on the end of a length of garden hose, with nothing to brace himself on. He is also able to scale a nearly-horizontal ladder upside-down -- a feat that I seriously doubt I could duplicate, despite my lack of elderly-ness.

Huge gripe:

The theatre we saw it at, for some reason, did not show us the new Pixar short beforehand. What the hell, people?

Still, it's a great movie. Just don't sit in front of a kid whose parents don't give a fuck if he kicks your chair the entire time.

Rachel Getting Married

Rating: 4 out of 12 Steps

Rachel Getting Married is one of those movies that's good because somebody smart said it was. It's not any fun to watch, and has almost no entertainment value, but it's artsy.

Everyone in this movie is fucking miserable, and damned if director Jonathan Demme isn't going to make sure the viewer is just as miserable every step of the way. If you need any proof of this fact, go ahead and run over to IMDB and take note of the fact that over half of the credited cast are playing parts that start with the phrase "12-Step."

Rachel's sister Kym (Anne Hathaway) just got out of rehab (yay!), and it wasn't her first time, by a long shot. She's got a miserable history of addiction and tragedy. Her family is broken by divorce and remarriage and has been driven to a near psychotic level of multiculturalism as a result.

Kym shows up, with her bitchiness turned up to about eight, guilts her sister into making her maid of honor (after she sleeps with the best man -- apparently minutes after arriving -- and he tells her she's not) instead of her friend who has actually helped plan the whole thing and actually, you know, not been a total bitch to Rachel and everyone else she can get her smoke-blowing, petulant face in front of.

So, there is a grand total of two likeable characters in this film, neither of which are Kym or Rachel, and one of which (Rachel's fiance) is something of a cypher, since he barely speaks. The other is the best man, but I get the feeling that, if you had a couple of days to get to know him, he'd turn out to be a jerk.

Did I mention that they are inexplicably having an Indian wedding? Well, they are. And it's inexplicable. And Rachel's husband-to-be is a black guy who sings Neil Young songs. I mean, it's like they're trying to confuse me just out of spite.

Rachel is getting married to a ... musician? Producer? I'm not entirely sure, except that he seems to know about four hundred other musicians who are played by real musicians, every one of whom plays at least one song at the wedding, and we get to listen. Wow, Robyn Hitchcock and Fab 5 Freddy are still alive? Awesome.

So what if the movie grinds to a halt every time somebody starts singing? You're supposed to be suffering, here, viewer!

This movie has more false endings than Return of the King. And, no, I'm not exaggerating. Every time the camera lingers on people as music plays and they all look at each other with a sad sort of reflection in their eyes ... Brazilian showgirls come running in!

Well, that only happens once, but it is not nearly as fun as it sounds.

There are some saving graces to the film, don't get me wrong. The acting is fine, the ... um ... well, the acting is good. The plot is manipulative button-pushing, but it's not boring, I guess. But if you don't like depressing stories featuring bitchy people with terrible family histories, filmed with a Cloverfield-esque lack of steadicam (barf!), I wouldn't recommend it.

Unless I didn't like you.

Star Trek

Rating: Varies (see below)

It's hard to rate a Star Trek film. Do you rate it compared to other movies, or compared to other science fiction movies? Or do you rate it in comparison with the rest of the franchise?

Either way, this film is certainly above average. As a science fiction movie, it delivers somewhere in the top 10%. As a Star Trek movie, it's a solid #2, behind the classic Wrath of Khan. As a movie, it's fairly average, with a massively overwrought plot that doesn't really make a lot of sense, counterbalanced by some excellent performances and a lot of good popcorn fun.

Luckily for Trek fans, the best performances in the film are given by our favorite four characters. Chris Pine is a great Kirk, Zachary Quinto manages to divorce himself from Heroes' Sylar completely and give us a Spock that feels very genuine, and Simon Pegg is a fun, if silly Scotty. Far and away the best of the big four, however, is Karl Urban's McCoy. Every word that comes out of his mouth is pure McCoy and he nails the character without seeming at all like he's doing an impression of DeForest Kelley's original.

My main gripe with the movie has to be the weak, weak villain. Eric Bana plays "Nero," a Romulan from a future in which Romulus has been destroyed and who, for rather idiotic reasons, has come to the past for vengeance. He's got the ingredients for pathos, but the movie just doesn't give him much to do with them. On top of that, he's sort of a "working class" Romulan, and lacks the panache of a really good space opera villain. Basically, he's pissed off, has a plan for vengeance, and really isn't very clever at all. There are a couple of attempts to give him some Khan-style gravitas, but they fall almost completely flat.

The plot, as I mentioned above, is way more convoluted than it ought to be. I don't know why the writers feel that time travel has to feature so heavily, considering that the very best installments of the series (Khan and Undiscovered Country) left it out. It is necessary for the pseudo-reboot that Abrams is effecting here, though, I guess.

This is kind of pedantic, but the "science" in this science fiction film, is almost more Star Wars than Star Trek. Trek has never been particularly realistic, but there's always been an attempt, at least, to cover up the hand-waving with some believable technobabble. I guess any cinematic attempt to work black holes and time travel into a plot is going to get a little goofy, but they don't even bother to handwave much this time around.

As far as visuals go, the action scenes at the personal level are better than any previous installment's, and the space sequences are very slick. Turning the Enterprise into a fighter plane rather than a battleship, while making for much more kinetic battle sequences, does have its drawbacks, however. There is little sense of mass in these vessels, and a corresponding failure to evoke the gut-wrenching feeling of damage that was so powerful in Khan.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Rating: 20 minutes out of 107 I'll never get back.

The makers of X-Men Origins: Wolverine are ahead of their time. They really should have waited until the Academy Awards show added a trophy for "Best Example of How Not to Make a Comic Book Movie," because they would have had it in the bag.

It's really a pity, because you can tell they worked so hard to hit every note precisely:

• Total disregard for the source? CHECK!
  
• Shitty green screen? CHECK!
• Shitty green screen in scenes that don't even need it? Like walking into some trees? CHECK!
• Fights that are so obviously on wires that they might as well have left them in? CHECK!
• Cornball dialogue? CHECK!
• Inconsistent even with other movies in the same franchise? CHECK!
• Good actors wasted by a shitty script? CHECK!
• Villain whose plan makes no fucking sense at all? CHECK!
• Way, way too many characters, "to make the fans happy?" CHECK!
• Characters who have no business in the story, just because they're popular? CHECK!

How this movie passed the kindergartner test is beyond me.

Focus Group Schmuck: So, Billy, what did you think about that scene with the motorcycle? Cool, huh?

Kindergartner: But ... the man from Wanted --

FGS: He's not from Wanted, he's Agent Zero!

K: Really? Cause he is just like that guy ... except when he's stealing moves from Christian Bale's character in Equilibrium.

FGS: AGENT ZERO. NOT FROM WANTED. Thank you.

K: Okay, the man who shoots things super fast and never misses ... why doesn't he shoot the motorcycle wheels?

FGS: Um ...

K: And since they know the only way to stop Wolverine is with adamantite bullets, why don't they give the gun with those bullets in it to the man who never misses with a gun instead of just leaving them lying around for the first two acts?

FGS: Uh ... he can only shoot regular bullets. Yeah.

K: And why do they keep saying Wolverine did bad things? He whines about every bad thing his friends do and then leaves before they even do it.

FGS: Well, he's the hero. We can't show him doing anything actually bad, because that would be complicated.

K: And why is Cyclops in it? He didn't know Wolverine in the other movie that comes later.

FGS: Well, it is a long time ago, maybe he forgot.

K: That seems unlikely.

FGS: A very long time ago.

K: If it's so long ago, why are they driving around in Hummers and using modern computers?

FGS: They're mutants.

K: Did you guys make this suck this bad just to make Brett Ratner feel better about himself?

FGS: Well ... Wait. How old are you again? Security!

Quantum of Solace

Rating: 2.4 Moores / 0.9 Connerys / 2.7 Daltons / 3.1 Lazenbys / 0.75 Craigs

It's okay. Not as good as Casino Royale and not a lot of fun, but fairly well made. The villain's plot is fairly lame, however, leading me to wonder how the guy can even show his face around some old-school Bond villains.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Fake environmentalist meanie DOMINIC GREENE enters SPECTRE Quantum HQ and spots a feeble and wheelchair-bound ERNST STAVRO BLOFELD. Greene approaches Blofeld with a creepy grin and big buggy eyes.

GREENE

Blofeld, good to see you out of traction! You're just in time to hear about our great new villainous scheme!

BLOFELD

Lay it on me, soul brother.

GREENE

We're going to ... overcharge Bolivians for their water! Muhahahahahah!!!

BLOFELD

Come again?

GREENE

... You know. Bolivians. We're stealing their water.

BLOFELD

Bolivians? Who gives a shit?

GREENE

Well, they're thirsty, see, and we stole the water--

BLOFELD

I get that, but is that your whole plan? Christ, son, in my day, we stole NASA Rockets and tried to start World War III! Jesus, even that pussy Hugo Drax tried to nerve gas the entire human race!


GREENE (confused)

Where's the profit in that?

BLOFELD

Profit? Fuck profit! We were in it for the evil, boy.

GREENE

Wait a minute! Our 007 is a lot harsher than yours, old man. He's a killing machine! If we did something really bad, he'd probably kill us and then go find our families. Fucking scary.

BLOFELD

Ah, he's a crybaby. I remember this one 007, we offed his wife right in front of him and he barely ever mentioned it again. Shit. This guy's obsessing over some double-crossing tramp for two movies! I made the mistake of screwing with another 007 when he was visiting his wife's grave and he threw me down an industrial smokestack with a helicopter! And I was in a goddamn wheelchair! Now go get me a cup of coffee before Oddjob drinks the whole goddamn pot.

No Country for Old Men (DVD)

Rating: What the hell?

Okay, the lesson I am repeatedly failing to learn, it would seem, is, "ignore the hype."

While I'll admit there was some good acting on the part of Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, and Josh Brolin, and that the first two acts were very tense and interesting, I pretty much hate this movie.

I'll warn you now: If you haven't seen it, don't read any further.

Seriously. I'm spoiling shit in a minute.

You sure?

Okay.

I know that I'll inevitably hear that it's, "more about characters than plot," or that it "defies convention," but the fact of the matter is that it kills the ostensible protagonist off-screen without giving us any indication that that's what's happening. What?

I mean, seriously, we see Moss (Brolin) standing around a pool getting hit on by some woman and the next time we see him, he's been machinegunned by the drug dealers. That's it.

How is that dramatic? How is that anything but annoying?

"Oh, the tragedies of life! There are no clean getaways! Blah blah blah."

Fuck that. If you're gonna kill a major character, I want to see it happen.

Well, surely there must be something else that happens at the end of the movie, right?

Eh. Bardem shows up and caps Mrs. Moss, as we pretty much figured he would. Then he gets into a car wreck, breaks his arm, and limps away. As far as I can tell with my unsophisticated pedestrian tastes, this has fuck-all to do with anything else in the movie.

"He's a force of nature! He symbolizes destruction that can't be stopped!"

No, he's a talented psychopath with a high pain threshold.

Oh, and Tommy Lee Jones talks about a dream he had.

THE END

I love the Coens. I like dark movies with troubling endings. I like very black comedy.

This movie had all of those things, and yet it did nothing for me.

Bardem is good, but Anton Chigurh's basically just Hannibal Lecter with better table manners and a bad haircut. He's scary and he's badass, but that's it. And, honestly, most of his best scenes were in the various trailers and previews.

Woody Harrelson is either miscast or badly written. His character seems to know how dangerous Chigurh is, but is totally cocky and confident that he can out-do him. But, based on how clearly he knows he's fucked as soon as he sees Chigurh, he only reasonable response he could have had would have been to turn down any job involving coming into contact with him in the first place. For a guy who's supposed to be a sharp, keenly analytical thinker, he's pretty stupid.

Tommy Lee Jones never shares a scene with any of the other major characters, so he's kind of just a commentary on the story. The violent things he sees disturb him, but there isn't a lot of story to his story. When he visits a disabled former deputy who worked for his father, he's reminded that quitting, just because he can't change the world, is vanity, but he quits anyway. It's well-done, but where's the story in that?

Josh Brolin has the toughest part in the movie, I'd say, and he does very well, but of course he gets robbed of the one scene you're waiting to see: his death. Moss also never comes face-to-face with Chigurh at all, so their only real confrontations are shooting at each other from a distance and growling at each other on the phone.

I wanted to see Moss live or die. I wanted to see him kill Chigurh or fail to kill him. I wanted to see something, anything other than a long-distance shot of some drug dealers driving away after killing him while we were watching Tommy Lee Jones drive a truck.

I wanted a lot of things, and ended up at roll credits with very little.

Ratner to Direct Conan Remake

So Brett Ratner has apparently entered final negotiations to direct the upcoming remake of Conan the Barbarian.

Let that sink in for a moment, if you know who Brett Ratner is.

If you don't, he's the genius behind "X-Men, The Last Stand" and "Rush Hour(s) 1-3" and "The Remake of Red Dragon that Sucked."

Basically, he's Hollywood's go-to guy if you want an intellectual property ruined and/or ground into joyless dust. He's a franchise-killer.

Despite the feeble protestations of a few Rush Hour 1 fans, Ratner has never done anything good that has appeared on screen. Nothing. He's a hack, and everyone, including Ratner himself, knows it.

He's currently developing Beverly Hills Cop 4. That is how shit Brett Ratner is.

So, when the slickly-edited trailers make it look like a new Conan is in the offing, and you start to get a little excited, just remember that it's all an illusion. Don't get your hopes up, because Ratner hates you as much as he loves money.

The Dark Knight

Rating: 4 out of 5 Citizen Kanes

Seriously, people. Get a grip.

Yes, The Dark Knight is a very good (if overlong) movie. Yes, Heath Ledger does give a memorable and movie-stealing performance as the Joker. And, yes, everybody else does a fine job as well.

But the hype ...

I try very hard to avoid getting my expectations inflated to the point that a movie disappoints me (or at least fails to thrill me as much as I am counting on). This worked very well with Iron Man, which had a phenomenal trailer that made me dread that the movie wouldn't live up to it (luckily, it pretty much did). Tedwrd and I would constantly add the comment, "It's gonna suck," to the end of any discussion of Iron Man to keep ourselves grounded.

(It didn't work as well for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which, unfortunately, did kinda suck.)

I'm not going to go on and on about The Dark Knight, since you've probably heard all there is to hear about it already. I liked it, but it was impossible for me to like it as much as every reviewer out there seems to think I should. It does have flaws, including an excessive running time that still manages to feel like Harvey Dent's character arc is too compressed.

But the Joker is pretty fantastic. I've read several reviews that come off as a bit apologist in retrospect because they insist that everybody else is right up there with Ledger, performance-wise. That's just not the case. He's legitimately phenomenal, and Aaron Eckhart is pretty great as D.A. Harvey Dent. Christian Bale is great as Bruce Wayne, but his Batman growl sounds like he's doing a bad Clint Eastwood impression.

I like Maggie Gyllenhaal, but I don't share the disdain for Katie Holmes' performance in Batman Begins, and I didn't think Gyllenhaal was a huge improvement. She was adequate, in a part that was kind of hit-and-miss, writing wise. I'm not sure Holmes would have been any worse.

Morgan Freeman (as Lucius Fox) got more to do in this one, but Michael Caine (as Alfred) got less. Frankly, I'm a bigger Caine than Freeman fan, so this was not a plus for me.

Still and all, it's an excellent film. Just remember that it isn't the greatest thing since the introduction of the moving picture and you may enjoy it more.

Addendum: The soundtrack, by the way, is frigging fantastic.

McG

I've always thought that the mono-named director "McG" sounded like a dick, based on his name alone. I just read an interview with him, and now I feel bad about that.

Also, I realize my name is ridiculous. I was born Joseph McGinty Nichol. McG is short for McGinty. I have been called this since the day I was born to create separation from my Uncle Joe and Grandpa Joe. I realize it sounds like some Hollywood nickname, hip-hop choice. But the truth is, this is simply my name - for every day of elementary school, every zit-filled day of high school. I have been taking shit for it ever since. I get it, I would think it's lame too. But it's just a name, and to change it now would seem fraudulent.

Okay, so maybe he's not a total douchebag after all (for this reason, at least).

Of course, he still makes crap movies and is basically scabbing an Americanized version of the Britcom Spaced without the consent or involvement of the original creators, so your mileage may vary.

The Golden Compass

Rating: Crappy

When I saw the early trailer for The Golden Compass, I was intrigued by what looked like a steampunk-style adventure with high production values. I decided to read the book before seeing the movie, as I didn't want a bad Hollywood take to ruin an otherwise well-regarded fantasy novel for me. Unfortunately, while the first book in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series was fairly entertaining, I wasn't particularly moved to pick up the subsequent installments.

The novel seemed too eager to cram in a lot of elements that didn't fit particularly well with one another. The witches, in particular, did not seem to fit with the rest of the world they supposedly watched over, and their every appearance was, to me, sort of irritating.

Now that I've seen the movie, I have a somewhat renewed appreciation for the novel, which seems vastly sophisticated, subtle and mature in comparison to the "large type for early readers" version that Chris Weitz managed to bring to the screen.

Now, anyone who even bothered to read the Wikipedia page for the book (much less the book itself) would understand that "The Golden Compass" doesn't refer to the "Aleithiometer" that Lyra carries throughout the story (and which looks a lot more like a big pocket watch than a compass in any case). The book wasn't even originally called The Golden Compass -- outside the U.S., it's known as Northern Lights -- and Lyra, not the Aleithiometer, is not the focal point of the story.

Not in the movie. In the movie, we are constantly bombarded with references to the Aleithiometer as a "Golden Compass" as if we were going to forget the name of the movie. And that really strikes to the heart of the problem with this film: It HAMMERS you with everything. Every plot detail is exhaustively explained, and every nuance is crushed under the weight of these explanations. Virtually all of the tension and power of the novel is utterly absent.

While Mrs. Coulter is clearly a villain in the novel, she is hardly the vampish monster that Nicole Kidman portrays. While in the novel her character lures children away to be abducted by charm and the sheer wonder of her presence, the film has her daemon (an animal-like physical representation of the souls of characters in this world -- everybody has one) brutally grab kids off the street. Almost none of the complexity of her character is on the screen -- or even possible, given the script. She's just a thuggish villain disguised as a sexy member of high society.

The movie even violates the ideas that it does keep from the novel. It is established in both that harm to a person's daemon is felt equally by the person, and yet Kidman's character at one point belts hers across the face and apparently feels nothing. (Ironically, this idiotic scene was apparently suggested by Pullman himself, which removes any lingering interest I might have had in reading the subsequent books.) It is crystal clear in the book that no one would ever do this -- your daemon is you, and you are your daemon.

Apparently, the end of the book was cut from the movie because it isn't exactly "upbeat" and because the studio wanted it to be a more marketable length. That would probably be fine, if they had kept the chapters in order, but Weitz inexplicably reverses two key portions of the book, placing a climactic battle between two armored bears before what is basically a prison break scene. We are then left with what might as well be a "To be Continued" ending that isn't even a cliffhanger. It's just Lyra musing about how she's going to go find her father with her new band of friends.

"Lame" is the only fitting description of the final sequence. Watching it, I was glad to see the movie go, and less interested in a cinematic sequel than I was in a literary one. Thankfully, the film didn't really perform domestically, so a sequel is unlikely.