Recently Seen: 1 NOV 13

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

Ugh, what a joyless slog.  Benedict Cumberbatch plays a military genius who doesn’t know that complex plans almost always fail.  Chris Pine plays a Skipper who really needs to get Division Officer and Department Head jobs under his belt so he can learn (a) how a ship actually runs, and (b) how to lead a vessel that’s part of a larger organization.  Zachary Quinto does a fine Spock and the rest of the actors do what they can with what they’re given, but they aren’t given much.

Lost, this time around, is the joy of Star Trek.  The real shame, however, is that the film doesn’t trade that joy for proper, meaty darkness, but for a by-the-numbers “things get really bad, and then – fistfight!” actioner.

This puts me in a strange place as a fan.  I was all set to hate the first film of the rebooted series, but wound up loving it.  I was all set to love the second, but wound up hating it.  Will NuTrek truly subvert Trek canon and make the odd-numbered movies the good ones?

ZERO DARK THIRTY

Solid spy picture built on, y’know, actual spying.  We all know the ending, yet this film imbued it with real tension.  Worth the rental.

DREDD

Well, I’ve seen two Karl Urban movies over the last few months.  I’m glad one of them was good.  Dredd was way more fun than I expected.  Urban does great work acting through, vice around, the mask.  Olivia Thirlby sells her role as the rookie, and cable favorites Lena Headey (Game of Thrones) and Wood Harris (The Wire) create outstanding villains.  The movie rocks right along, and it shows that “grimngritty” doesn’t have to be dull.

Dredd deserved to be a hit.

END OF WATCH  (Mild spoilers.  If you’re spoilerphobic, just take my word for it and see this film.)

End of Watch is a great movie.  A buddy cop movie in which the cops start out as buddies (instead of making us sit through the tedium of watching them bond), End of Watch sells us by making the two leads people we enjoy spending time with.  Because the film gives the audience time to get to know these people and begin to bond with them as only movie audiences can, we find ourselves that much more invested as their lives get progressively more difficult.

My favorite thing about this movie?  I kept waiting for the twist in which the Lieutenant was actually on the take or somebody doublecrossed the hero cops or the rot in the system got exposed.  When that twist didn’t come (hey, I warned you about spoilers), End of Watch left us with basically good people doing a hard job in a dangerous place.  That, friends, is a recipe for great drama.

MODERN TIMES

Hey, if you haven’t seen Modern Times, you need to get on that right away.  Perhaps Charlie Chaplin’s greatest film, Modern Times is timelessly funny and ever-relevant.

When we talk about classic films, the kinds of movies people will still be watching three and four hundred years from now, Modern Times absolutely makes that list.  It’s funny, it’s brilliant, and it’s serious.  See this film.

PARA NORMAN

My family loved this movie.  My wife loved this movie.  I was distracted that evening, so couldn’t really get into it.  I’m adding the movie here for my own tracking purposes.

THE LORAX

If there’s one thing I love, it’s being preached at by some multibillion entertainment company.  I particularly love it when that company is preaching against the evils of capitalism.  Preach it, oh Universal Pictures!  Paint the capitalist villains as Southerners and West Virginians, because surely “those kind of people” must seem very backward to the decisionmakers in Universal City!  Give me all $70 million of your production budget’s worth of “profit is evil” goodness!

Or, on second thought, take a hike.

Red

RED is a silly, ultraviolent, pulpy action picture that features Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown.

I know.  I had you at “Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown.”  Now, try this on: “Dame Helen Mirren in a slinky white evening gown, wielding a machine gun.”

Woof.

Here’s the story: Bruce Willis is a retired CIA covert ops guy.  For reasons that will be revealed later, the CIA decides that he and his buddies all need to die, and quickly.  Well, as we’ve learned in The Losers, The Expendables, and The A Team, it’s always a bad idea to try to kill off covert ops guys – they can kill back.

So what?  What differentiates this from the other three “superduper commando teams solve the mystery and kill a bunch of people” movies that came out last year?

Um.  Helen Mirren.  Slinky white evening gown.  Machine gun.

Ok, there’s more to RED than Dame Helen Mirren mowing down hostiles while clothed in a slinky white evening gown.  Bruce Willis is a natural movie star who’s just plain fun to watch.  His team is made entirely of outstanding actors: Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Brian Cox, even James Remar and Mary-Louise Parker.  We also get the Great Ernest Borgnine in a crucial supporting role and Karl Urban and Richard Dreyfuss as villains.  We’re talking about serious wattage here: these people know how to own a movie screen.

And it works.  All that charisma carries RED’s wafer-thin story for a solid hour and a half of gunfire, ‘splosions, and a brand of carefree murder so blasé that we cease to think of the targets as characters and see them as the stuntmen they are.  Red turns out to be silly, fun, anarchic, and a great time at the movies.

I just wish I’d seen it on the big screen.

Star Trek

STAR TREK does all the things a good summer action movie should do. It has pathos. It has jokes. It has sex. It blows lots of stuff up real good. It's also a surprisingly good picture, one made to entertain the general public while throwing plenty of bones to the trekkies in the audience.

Here's the deal: the charismatic and dangerous Eric Bana (Really, you should see CHOPPER) plays an angry guy out for revenge through multi-planetary genocide. BOTTLE SHOCK's terrific Chris Pine is li'l Captain James T. Kirk, the only cat in the Federation bad enough to take him on. Joining li'l Kirk is li'l Spock, li'l McCoy, and the rest of the gang. They crack jokes. They have conflict. They blow stuff up. Li'l Spock gives li'l Kirk one of those manly nods of the head saying, "I guess you're ok, after all." Most importantly, Leonard Nimoy shows up as Big Spock, and there is no such thing as a film that is worse off for the presence of one Leonard Nimoy.

The thing about "Star Trek" that the post - original series showrunners never got was that nobody cares about make believe diplomacy among imaginary alien races. Nobody cares about heavy handed, though well meaning, depictions of of the Marxist utopia of the future. People care about the friendship of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. That's the dynamic that has always made Star Trek worth watching, and J.J. Abrams gets it. STAR TREK may spend lots of time on space battles and angry villains, but it's really about that friendship, about sharing in the feeling that there are people around you who've got your back. It's a good feeling, and it's a good way to spend a couple of hours at the movies.