$200 Reviews #3, “Star Trek Into Darkness”

“You don’t rob a bank when the getaway car has a flat tire.”

- Leonard “Bones” McCoy

       Should the first film in a series that was made during a writers strike, with its fair share of plot holes and underdeveloped characters, be more entertaining than its sequel which was released four years later with the exact same filmmakers involved?

      No, it should not. But we live in a world where that’s a reality with J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the sequel to the 2009 rejuvenation of the 40-year-old sci-fi franchise.

      I’ve seen the movie twice now, Wednesday night at midnight and again Sunday night. Any issues I had with it were mostly put the rest upon revisiting it except for the film’s conclusion.  Thanks to the need to placate fanboys by replicating some iconic moments from Trek’s past and an ending that is exact copy of the first except with Carol Marcus thrown in, you have too much reliance on what’s came before and not enough new thresholds crossed.

    “Into Darkness” has everything that made the first one enjoyable: great action, humor and an incredible cast with enticing chemistry. It even has a more compelling villain than Nero in the form of Benedict Cumberpatch’s Khan.

    But aside from Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Scotty, the rest of the main characters are present simply to perform the functions they served in the first Trek without any tangible character development. Karl Urban’s “Bones” spouts humorous metaphors and warns Kirk not to do things and the writers further prove they don’t know what to do with Chekov by sending him to Engineering for the whole adventure (red shirt and all).

   There are some really powerful moments in STID, but none of them quite reach the heights of the opening sequence from it predecessor. Though one of those moments is ripped out from under you 5 minutes later while in previous entries they waited at least one  movie.

   STID is a more well constructed movie over the 2009 entry, but it’s guilty of what movies like “Iron Man 2″ and “Transformers 2″ did: take what made the original so fun and then try to do more of it and even repeat some of it. Sequels should be about building on the already strong foundations and charting new territory. Lighting can only be caught in a bottle once.

   If it wasn’t for the hasty attempt to put a nice bow on the movie and the lack of forward momentum on plotting, “Into Darkness” would be considered a superior entry in the Trek saga.

   Even without all of my griping, I can’t go without saying “Star Trek Into Darkness” is the most fun I’ve had at the movies so far in 2013. While there is a lot of familiar, yet overdone aspects to it, Abrams and Company know how to put together an adventure you want to revisit.

   Other thoughts and some spoilers:

• It took me until the second viewing to catch a reference to the “Mudd incident.” 
• I have some friends who think there wasn’t enough weight to the movie. *spoiler* If Khan were able to successfully wake up his 72 followers, they would go on a genocidal rampage to cleanse the Earth of inferior beings….so pretty much everyone. I’d call those high stakes.
• Bruce Greenwood needs to be in more films. His scenes with Chris Pine are among the best of the rebooted series.

$200 reviews #2, “42″

Verdict: Watch on cable

“Money isn’t black or white. Money is green.”

 -  Branch Rickey

     There was a time in the early to mid-2000s when it seemed every underdog, sport related story you could think of was being adapted into a movie.

     Some were about race relations, like “Remember the Titans” (2000) and”Pride” (2007),  ”Radio” (2003) was about mental illness and then there was the greatest underdog story of them all (for me), “Miracle,” in 2004.

      Now a few years late, comes “42,” probably the most important sports story to be adapted to a film. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland (“A Knight’s Tale,” “L.A. Confidential”), “42″ chronicles the trails faced by Jackie Robinson as he became the first African-American to play in Major League Baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers during the 1947 season.

     I’m being completely honest when I say “42″ is late to the party, feeling like a movie that should have come out 5 to 7 years ago in the wake of the success of “Remember the Titans” instead of 2013.

    While it’s financed through Legendary Studios and distributed by Warner Brothers, if it weren’t for a surprising amount of curse words (some necessary, other not), I would have thought “42″ was a Disney movie.

   An opening montage narrated by Andre Holland’s newspaper-reporter character Wendell Smith gives exposition on the 1940s in the form of a bad documentary aimed at middle schoolers, we’re given a very rapid account of the events leading to Robinson joining the Dodgers organization in 1945. This was made possible by the general manager of Dodger’s, Branch Rickey, who is portrayed by Harrison Ford in his most engaging role in recent years that isn’t Indiana Jones.

Branch (Ford) and Robinson (Boseman) in work out some issues in the film’s emotional apex.

   While there are  decent performances from the supporting cast, such as Disney Channel Original movie alum Ryan Merriman, the charming Nicole Beharie and Law & Order veteran Christopher Meloni, everyone’s performance is elevated when their in the same scene with Ford. This is even more clear with Chadwick Boseman, who plays Robinson.

   One would surmise from the opening to the film that Wendell Smith, in his reporter role, would have been more involved in the telling of Robinson’s story. However, aside from about two or three scenes where he is seen with his typewriter, Smith is portrayed more as Robinson’s bodyguard instead of a journalist assigned to write about his exploits.

   While it would be easy for any movie about race-based material to be preachy toward its audience, “42″ barely backs away from that line by having Rickey remind us that while the treatment of non-whites in baseball was despicable, the sport is also a business and the decision to sign Robinson was based both in what was morally right but what was also beneficial to the Dodger’s bottom line.

   Baseball has proven to be one of the more movie-friendly sports, but “42″ never feels like it tries to really rise to the materials worth. Many sports movies have an endgame of a team winning a championship or a certain game while “42″ is about Robinson gaining acceptance in baseball, which the film would have you believe is done in one season when Robinson leads the Dodgers to a division title. The only real tension in the movie is felt when you’re anticipating Robinson buckling under the scrutiny of the stadiums full of crowds jeering him.

    While  powerful moments are present in the film, from Rickey showing Pee Wee Reese cabinet drawers full of hate mail addressed to Robinson after Reese was worried after getting just one, to Rickey consoling Robinson in the dugout after the young-man lets all of his rage out, none of it comes together for one fluid narrative. Most of the last hour comes off as a drawn out montage.

   Without a consistent narrative voice, “42″ doesn’t have the drive seen in “Remember the Titans” or baseball films such as “For the Love of the Game” or “A League of their Own.”

$200 Review #1: “Admission”

“To me, religion is like Paul Rudd. I see the appeal and I would never take it away from anyone, but I would also never stand in line for it.”

- Jeff Winger, Community 1×12, “Comparative Religion”

 

    Synopsis: A Princeton admissions officer (Fey) who is up for a major promotion takes a professional risk after she meets a college-bound alternative school kid who just might be the son she gave up years ago in a secret adoption.

   Verdict: Rent

    Just over seven hours away from me is a group of people who will at some point over the next month or so, make a judgement call. Accept me in their small graduate program or not? It’s a decision that will determine what the next year of my life will be like and it’s completely out of my hands.

    While I’m applying to a small program in the Midwest, Portia Nathan (Tina Fey) is an admissions officer at Princeton University, one of the most prestigious colleges in the country, which just lost its No. 1 spot in the U.S. News rankings.

   The film opens with Portia doing what she’s loyally done for 16 years, going through files of prospective high school students who hope their multitude of accomplishments both in and out of the classroom are enough to get them admitted.

   Then enters John Pressman (Rudd), the head of a development school located 10 minutes from where Portia grew up, who wants to her to review the application his brightest student, Jeremiah. It turns out John dated Portia’s roommate in college and surmised from something she told him that Jeremiah is the baby Portia gave up for adoption. Thus begins the movie’s tale of Portia doing everything she can in order to get her would-be-son into N0.1  No.2 college in the country.

  While “Admission” fits into the mold of a straight-forward dramedy,    There are certain elements to it one wouldn’t expect from a film like this. Whenever an admission officer reads the file of a applicant, the teen suddenly appears in the room to recite the contents of their application. It’s a very effective way to put the audience in a sympathetic mindset for the applicant — right before they’re denied entry and disappear through a trap door. It sort of reminded me of the sequence in “Jack Reacher” where the opening shooting sequence is retold from the victims point-of-view, one of the more riveting sequnces from last year.

   While director Paul Weitz (“American Pie”) is able to put together a compelling narrative,  the movie lacks any real motivating energy, making the time spent watching feel longer than its 107-minute run time.  Some of this comes from story lines and gags that go on for too long, including Portia constantly running into her ex-boyfriend, who leaves her after getting a “vile Virginia Woolf scholar” pregnant.

   But there is energy to be had and that’s in the chemistry of the ensemble cast, which consists of Wallace Shawn, Lily Tomlin and Michael Sheen.

    After plowing through the entire run of “30 Rock” earlier this year I’m completely in love with the talent of Tina Fey. Portia is more put together here than Liz Lemon, but there’s just enough there, be it from Fey herself or the screenplay by Karen Corner, to make the character sympathetic. The most surprising part of the movie is that sympathy is challenged toward the end as Portia makes questionable decisions to help Jeremiah.

   As the quote prefacing this review stated, I would never stand in line for Paul Rudd. I don’t hate the guy, in fact I thought he was a nice addition as the teacher in last year’s “Perks of Being a Wallflower.” He’s charismatic as Pressman and had a great back-and-forth with Fey, but who doesn’t have that? Rudd is serviceable, but works better in a supporting role.

   The surprise in “Admission” is Nat Wolff, who plays the autodidactic Jeremiah. Though he was initially presented as a character with quirks bordering on those present in Sheldon on “Big Bang Theory,” that is quickly averted. Wolff has the awkward charisma I associate with Jason Segel and I would love to see them in project together down the line.

  The story presented in “Admission ” is one relatable to parent and child, teacher and student. While the family themes can be slightly overbearing at times, it wasn’t enough to dampen my investment in the story.

  While I’m giving the movie a “Rent” judgement, “Admission” is a unique film in its genre. Not all of the stories presented end with a nice bow. There are consequences to actions that in a similar movie would be swept away by the magical hand of “narrative convenience.” Just because Portia’s character is worthy of some sympathy doesn’t mean she should escape fault and thankfully she doesn’t. It’s a decision which makes the movie well worth a viewing.

$200 Reviews: Preamble

    What’s a guy to do with his summer when he’s graduated from college and waiting to hear about his possible future in grad school?

   Simple. Go see a movie. A lot.

    Thanks to a very generous graduation gift from my grandmother, a $200 gift card to the Malco movie chain, I’ll be in the dark confines of a movie theater over the next three to four months than I have been in entire years. 

   I have a lot of catching up to do too. It’s the middle of May and I’ve only seen a grand total of seven films which were released this year. If I were to only spend the gift card at the Sunset Malco in Springdale, where I’ve been seeing movies since Junior High, I’d be able to see nearly 65 movies.

   But that number will be diminished since Sunset is now a second-run theater, playing movies that were released three to four months ago. I still have to deal with the big releases of “Man of Steel,” “Star Trek into Darkness,” the big question mark that is “The Wolverine” and more.

   That’s still a lot of movies. And I’ll be reviewing every single one in some fashion. Starting with a review of Tina Fey’s “Admission,” I’ll be running the gauntlet of films 2013 has to offer. 

Other upcoming movies:

• “Side Effects”
• “42″
• “Star Trek Into Darkness”
• “Mud”
• “Oblivion”
• “Pain and Gain”

So let’s get started shall we?

“Thirteen Reasons Why” reflection/review

      Once upon a time, I could read a book in no time flat. Give me two or three days and I would have it read it cover-to-cover. Then I would be on to the next adventure awaiting me within the confines of whatever book I had picked up at Barnes and Noble, the local library, my school library or the local Vintage Stock for those of you familiar with Northwest Arkansas.

    Once upon a time, I was a high school student.

    Then the “college years” and work got in the way and over the last four years I’ve be lucky to finish a book in a minimum of two weeks. Don’t get me wrong, I still read. My four years at Arkansas State opened a lot of doors to what I was willing to read, especially in the world of non-fiction.

     When I get hold of a particularly good book, I take it with me everywhere. That happens about two or three times a year.

.     This has been a unique week. I graduate from college on Saturday. I finished all of my class obligations on Monday. That left me with four days to kill before I accept my diploma. Four days to catch up on some reading.

    Enter “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher and a return to my high school reading habits.

    I could have been doing a lot over the last two days. I could have started the task of packing up my dorm room for the return trip home. I could have done some Internet job searching to make the next couple of months a little easier to get through. But I didn’t.

    Apart from a few hours spent with friends and sampling other readings, my nose was firmly planted in Asher’s first novel. In just over 24 hours, I had “Thirteen Reasons Why” finished. This was aided by having stayed up till about 4 a.m. to read almost 3/4′s of the book.

     For roughly 24 hours, Asher transported me back to a time in my life where I put too much stock in pretty much everything my 14 to 18-year-old self cared about (except for the first season of “Heroes.”) and when my reading selection consisted mostly of whichever “Star Wars” book I hadn’t read yet.

    The book also reminded me of a not-so memorable time.  A four-year period from 2000 to 2005 where school was the last place I wanted to be and “friend” was a term I reserved for the few people I could get along with at church. This was a time when I got into fights at school and was suspended at least once.

   I was unhappy. I let the tiniest things, including jokes about my home-state of Texas, get to me and more than once I wound up in the principle’s office and at least once suspended from school.

   My schooling experience finally got better in 8th grade when I met my core “best friends” who are still apart of my life today, two of whom are even coming to my graduation this weekend.

    But not every high school experience, not even mine, is a smooth road. “Thirteen Reasons Why” was a vivid reminder  that while we might consider the four years that make up high school the “best” years of our lives, they can also be the cruelest.

    Every page of Asher’s first book reminded me how precarious the social structure of high school was or had the potential to be. I never experienced anything quite resembling the events Hannah Baker or Clay Jensen went through in the stories recounted in “Thirteen Reasons Why,” and I’m beyond thankful for that. However, it’s not hard to believe the possibility that some at my school did, without the outcome found in the book.

    How did Asher keep me reading his book almost non-stop for 24 hours?

    He did it by effortlessly putting me in the shoes of two different narrators. One speaking to the other from the past and the other learning how he fit into her tragic story that includes 12 other people; one for each side of a tape.

   Push and pull. Give and take. That’s how functional relationships work and that’s how Asher is able to make the tale of a girl telling the story of how she decided to commit suicide through seven tapes while the boy who all but loved her forces himself to listen so compelling.

   Having two narrators giving you two sides of the same story at the same time is a feat, but it’s what make the book so engaging.

   How do two people interpret the same events? It all comes down to what information each person has and what they do with it. How many conflicts could be avoided in high school, even college, if all parties involved just stopped to try to comprehend where the other was coming from?

   That’s how the reader spends most of the book, figuring out where Clay fits in a story involving at least 13 other people,

     That’s how we spend the majority of our high school and even our college years. Just trying to find out where and with who, we belong.

    Of all of the messages or lessons that are conveyed in “13 Reasons Why,” the most important, for me anyway, is that all of our actions matter. While in the big cosmic picture, that might not mean anything, it does during those formative years in high school and even college.

   Every person we interact with, no matter how briefly or extensively, is going through their own trials. We don’t and can’t possibly have all of the clues needed to understand what those are,  but how we treat people in those moments can have an unfathomable impact on how it plays out.

   It’s books like “Thirteen Reasons Why” I wish I had read more of in grade school. It wouldn’t have solved any of my problems, but it would have made getting through the gauntlet know as high school a little more bearable.

Review: “A Good Day to Die Hard”

   

 

 

What do you get when you put a 25-year old action series, along with its aging protagonist, together with the director of “Max Payne” and “The Omen,” and the screenwriter of the notoriously incompetent “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”?

If you guessed the first great action flick of 2013, you would be wrong. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change?

What you do get unfortunately, is “A Good Day to Die Hard,” the fifth entry in the Bruce Willis starring series that follows John McClane, a New York City police officer, who has been in the “wrong place at the wrong time,” since the original “Die Hard” was released in 1988.

Directed by John Moore and written by Skip Woods, Die Hard 5 takes the series that had already distanced itself from its classic framework and almost makes it a parody of itself.

John McClane used to be a finely crafted character, with a seemingly endless barrel of wise cracks to spout off to over confident mad men. Now Willis is given the bare essentials of his iconic character. The dialogue penned by Woods is uninspired and repetitive as McClane is heard yelling, “I’m on vacation!” at least five times as he dispatches one faceless Russian terrorist after another.

Where McClane used to be given allies that offered a complementary balance to his own abrasive personality, this time he’s paired with his estranged, CIA employed son Jack, played by Jai Courtney (“Jack Reacher”). McClane is in Russia to find out why his son shot a man in a Russian club and is now being put on trial.

Did I mention he’s in the CIA? Guess who forgot to tell father dearest?

All of this is part of a lifeless first act that could be mistaken for any low-budget action movie, something Willis has been very familiar with before a career resurgence last year.

You’ll be hard pressed to find any chemistry between the Willis and Courtney, whose “banter” involves non-stop yelling, none of which is amusing or constructive. Most of the time it feels like John McClane is just tagging along in his son’s adventure, which is something “Die Hard” doesn’t need.

 

 

The movie’s most dynamic action set piece is a long, erratic and poorly shot car chase through the streets of Moscow as Jack and the man he’s assigned to protect, played by Sebastian Koch, are chased by movie’s head henchman, who is in turn chased by McClane Senior.

I’m not vehemently opposed to the shaky camera technique that has become a staple of the genre since “The Bourne Identity” in 2002. However, Moore carelessly deploys it here, along with incoherent editing, to give the audience no chance at understanding the geography of the scene.

You can get choreography that is more competent and more fulfilling action scenes from the last film I reviewed, “The Last Stand.”

What’s even more interesting is that the chase will be 30 percent longer on Moore’s DVD Director’s Cut according to Empire Magazine.

The Die Hard series is known for having interesting and well-acted villains who come with a twist to oppose John McClane, with Alan Rickman’s (Snape in “Harry Potter”) Hans Gruber from the original still being the gold standard.

However, the previous film’s “twists” usually involved what the villain’s goal really is. With Die Hard 5, the attempted twist also keeps you from knowing who you’re supposed to be rooting against until the last 15 minutes, which dovetails with an over the top, CGI filled climax with unnecessarily slow motion explosions.

Every once in a while, what made the first four “Die Hards” either great or decent flashes through. But whether it be a dead panned line from Willis or a nice, but not so subtle reference to the original, it doesn’t make up for a sloppy and tedious fifth installment.

Day 11: J.J. Abrams is the Chosen One

I can’t tell you when, where or how old I was the first time I watched “Star Wars.” It was a long time ago.

I can tell you I where I was when I first read the news that Lucasfilm had been sold to Disney for $4.2 billion and oh, by the way, they were going to make Episode VII and it would be released in 2015. Cue the five stages of grief experienced twice, once that day, and then again spread out over the next few months.

But yesterday, my melancholy feelings toward the future of my favorite film series pretty much dissipated with the news (without official confirmation from Disney or Lucasfilm) that J.J. Abrams would be the man to bring the continued adventures from Galaxy Far, Far Away.

Why is Abrams the right man for the job? Because he’s an unabashed fan of the series. He respects the source material and is no stranger to the world and characters. But most importantly, he knows how to craft a story with rich characters – outside of Checkov – and he knows how make it exciting.

But the big elephant in the room is now Abrams’ association with that other sci-fi franchise that starts with “Star,” you know little ole “Trek?”

Well guess what? I couldn’t be happier.

The requel (reboot/sequel) of the more than 40 year old series in 2009 is one of my favorite movies of all time. Abrams and his Bad Robot team were able to breath new life into an franchise that had fell victim to over saturation through the 90s and early 2000s and needed to go in a different direction if it ever wanted to find the main stream appeal that Star Wars had held since its release in 1977.

How did Abrams do that? By using the same “Heroes Journey” template that George Lucas mined for Luke Skywalker’s story. Don’t believe me? The 2009 version of James Tiberius Kirk is basically a Han Solo character put into the shoes of Luke. The story begins with Nero’s giant vessel attacking a much smaller Federation vessel, not much different from Vader’s Star Destroyer bearing down on the Rebel Corvette in the opening of A New Hope.

There’s a few other similarities, like old Spock and Captain Pike playing the surrogate of Obi-Wan Kenobi. But my favorite is this one, two shots that represent the same message: the yearning for more:

Say what you want about “Lost” (he wasn’t really involved past the Pilot save for the season 3 premiere) or about plot holes in “Star Trek” (blame some of that on the writer’s strike) and stop with the lame lens flare jokes.

In my eyes, Abrams was the perfect choice to sit in the director’s chair for at least the first entry in the next trilogy.

He’ll bring old school sensibilities that were present in “Super 8,” an homage to the early 80s Spielberg movies and he’ll know how to entice the audience, from the first teaser trailer to the last frame before the credits.

And after resurrecting a series like Trek, who better than Abrams to give Star Wars a much needed punch in the arm?

I might not remember when I saw Star Wars for the first time, but I sure know where I’ll be in 2015.

I’ve got a good feeling about this.