I never hope for a movie to be a box office failure, but let’s just say I take a certain perverse sense of satisfaction when poor efforts garner similar results. “A Wrinkle in Time,” based on the children’s novel by Madeleine L'Engle, wasn’t exactly a financial disaster, earning $129 million worldwide.
But it was a big, expensive movie, the first time an African-American female director (Ava DuVernay) was entrusted with a nine-figure budget. And “Wrinkle” did not do “Black Panther” numbers.
Dollars and sense aside, the movie is just a discombobulated mess. Unless you’ve read the book, you’ll spend much of your time trying to puzzle out who the characters are and where the sci-fi/fantasy story is going.
Storm Reid plays Meg Murray, a forlorn girl of about 12 who is pining for her long-lost dad, a scientist who disappeared several years ago. She finds herself spirited away on a journey through the cosmos, with three mystical beings called the Missuses guiding the way.
Chief among them is Miss Which, a queenly sort played by Oprah Winfrey. Like her sisters (Mindy Kaling and Reese Witherspoon), they look like bedazzled women who wear lavish wedding dresses for every occasion.
Tagging along with Meg are her chirpy 6-year-old brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), and Calvin (Levi Miller), a handsome lad her own age who’s very supportive and nonthreatening. The cast also includes Chris Pine as the dad; Gugu Mbatha-Raw as the mom; Zach Galifianakis as the Happy Medium, a kooky advice-giving sort; and Michael Peña as Red, a crimson fellow who offers some assistance.
It’s a beautiful, colorful film -- imagine Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in space, with fantastical creatures and warp-holes. But eventually we become listless at the uninspired storytelling.
Video extras are pretty generous. They include an expansive making-of documentary; four deleted scenes with commentary; a feature-length audio commentary track with DuVernay and a half-dozen of her key crew members; blooper reel; and two music videos.
I never read the popular children's novel by Madeleine L'Engle (or even knew it existed, for that matter). But any movie should be able to stand on its own from its source material, especially one aimed at a YA audience of 9- to 13-year-olds. Instead, we get a big-budget movie that requires a written program and screen subtitles just to approach basic comprehensibility.
Directed by Ava DuVernay ("Selma") from a screenplay by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell, "A Wrinkle in Time" is the story of a brave, precocious girl who goes on spiritual and inter-dimensional trip across the universe in search of her long-lost father, a dreamer and voyager, who abandoned the family out of a sense of higher purpose.
(If that sounds like it has a more than passing resemblance to the plot of "Interstellar," that's because it does. One wonders if this movie could exist without that one, or that movie could exist without the book. But that's one for the philosophers and/or copyright lawyers to ponder.)
The film is getting most of its attention for the starring role of Oprah Winfrey as the chief of "the Missuses," odd interstellar beings easily identifiable by their pancake makeup, kooky elaborate costumes and bedazzled faces and hair. As Mrs. Which, Winfrey wears what appears to be a cross between a suit of armor and Cinderella's ballroom gown, jeweled eyebrows and an albino wig of sea foam swirls.
For most of her scenes, Mrs. Which materializes in an outlandishly outsized form, so she's literally towering above the other characters, delivering pronouncements from on high like a beneficent god-queen. I realize that's already how a large chunk of our population views Winfrey, so it will likely not seem out of place to them.
Though, in keeping with the broadcasting titan's self-love ethos, Mrs. Which admonishes one of her lessers that there is 'no such thing as the wrong size' -- which is something you can get away with saying if you are a billionaire who has literally been every size.
Her sisters/followers are Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), who always seems a little dazed and is constantly reciting famous quotes -- with attribution! -- and Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), who appears to be the novice of the trio, having been assigned to help out Meg Murray (Storm Reid), the story's protagonist.
The Missuses actually disappear about halfway through the movie, leaving the kids in charge. Meg has become moody and angry in the four years since her dad vanished, claiming it's possible to bend space and time with the help of a Tesseract. It's unclear if this is a physical object or a term for using one's mind, since the act of wrinkling the cosmos is also used as a verb "to tesser."
Conjugate that, kiddies!
Her adopted 6-year-old brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), is supposed to be some kind of pint-sized science genius, although with his chirpy voice shouting most of his dialogue at parakeet octaves, I'll have to take the filmmakers' word that what he had to say was smart. He comes along for the trip, for reasons that remain unclear.
Even murkier are the motivations of Calvin (Levi Miller), a dreamy boy who's nice and supportive to everyone. His job is basically to just stand around and tell Meg how great she is. In most movies, Calvin and Meg would end up as a cute teen couple, but despite some moony looks passing back and forth, there's barely even a supportive hug.
Calvin is not so much a character as a Beta Male fantasy of what 12-year-old girls think the perfect boy is supposed to be like, at least until they get to high school and dump him for the football jock or the parking-lot pothead.
Anyway, they visit various fantastical-looking worlds filled with flying flowers and other CGI curiosities, and at one point Whatsit transforms into a flat, furry flying creature that looks like a vegan version of the critter from "The Neverending Story."
There's also some kind of evil force spreading across the universe, known simply as the It, which I thought we had all clearly established was an underground clown that either kills children or makes them have group sex with each other.
Zach Galifianakis turns up as the Happy Medium, who's some kind of lonely guru; Chris Pine is Meg's dad, sporting Hollywood hair that looks short but droops down past the cheekbones when it gets mussed; Gugu Mbatha-Raw is the mom, consigned to just looking smashing and doing nothing; and Michael Peña plays a guy on a beach who seems helpful but really has his mind on one thing, which either makes him the villain or every single teenage boy ever, who wouldn't be caught dead buying a ticket for this movie.
"A Wrinkle in Time" is like a safe acid trip for youngsters, full of color and music and powerful females and guys who know enough to get out of the way of the ladies.
I sometimes stop to think why “Wonder Woman” is such a superior super-hero flick.
After all, it is fairly conventional in its storytelling structure: a standard-issue origin tale, in which a reluctant youngster acquires extraordinary abilities/status, applies them in the greater world in what they think are appropriate ways and later learns the pitfalls of that whole great powers/great responsibilities rubric.
It starts, I think, with this heroine and this actress. The superhero genre has gone through some interesting changes over the past two decades, but it’s still heavily predominated by male filmmakers presenting male characters for a male audience. The women are, literally, the background characters and the sidekicks.
Even Wonder Woman started out that way, as a third-act boost to -- and in many ways the best thing about – last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
There was a sad, reluctant quality to Wonder Woman in her few moments of non-fighting scenes, and we get to explore that fully and forcefully in her solo flick. Directed by Patty Jenkins – who had to wait 14 years between her first and second feature film directing credit – from a screenplay by Allan Heinberg, the film re-introduces us to the character, fleshing out the flashy exterior in ways that surprise and touch us.
She journeys from naivety to poise, from innocent to hardened warrior and from privileged princess to self-imposed outsider.
And you cannot separate Gal Gadot from the success of “Wonder Woman.” She embodies the character’s strength and vulnerability, bringing a weighty presence you don’t normally see in a superhero flick. It may just be the best acting performance in this genre since… ever.
Chris Pine acquits himself nicely in the “romantic interest” role normally reserved for a female character, as an American spy infiltrating the German World War I war machine working on chemical weapons of mass destruction.
Danny Huston is his usual sneering self as the chief villain, but I was much more affected by Dr. Maru, the creepy scientist dubbed “Dr. Poison,” played so soulfully by Elena Anaya. With her broken mask and shattered psyche, the character is worthy of her own movie.
In the end, “Wonder Woman” triumphed not just because it was about a female hero, but because the people involved in making it obviously invested so much of their passion and souls into this wondrous film.
Bonus features are quite expansive and exquisite, and are nearly the same for DVD and Blu-ray editions. The centerpiece is “Crafting the Wonder,” a comprehensive making-of documentary.
Probably the highlight is a series of featurettes called “A Director’s Vision,” as Jenkins takes viewers on exclusive behind-the-scenes journeys through filming several key sequences and themes of the picture. There is one bonus new scene and several extended ones, a blooper reel, and interactions with young female filmmakers, poets and other artists who have been inspired by Wonder Woman.
Other features explore her role within the DC Comics “Trinity” with Batman and Superman and creating the Amazonian army.
I’ve seen a lot of great movies so far in 2016, but “Hell or High Water” still rests at the top of the list for me. It’s a combination of old-school Western, film noir potboiler and modern parable. It’s an action-heavy picture that has something thoughtful to say about the banking crisis and how it’s affected dirt-poor folks in hardscrabble rural states.
Chris Pine and Ben Foster play Toby and Tanner Howard, rough-hewn brothers who came up on a farm in West Texas. Tanner went the outlaw route, spending most of his adulthood behind bars, while Toby’s had a rough go with his job, marriage and surviving parent all lighting out on him. Now the siblings are robbing banks at an astonishing clip -- two, even three a day.
They seem to be out for some purpose other than just money, seeing as how they target only banks in small towns. Marcus, a soon-to-retire Texas Ranger played with authority by Jeff Bridges, is put on the case since it seems too insignificant to get the federal authorities involved. Marcus and his partner (Gil Birmingham) start making the rounds, lackadaisically interviewing witnesses, etc.
Marcus has been phoning it in for years, but his dormant instincts get peppered up by the prospect of going out in a blaze of glory. A widower with no family and no real life outside the law, he’s in some ways less afeard of going down in a gunfight than rocking his way to senility on a lonely front porch.
The men gradually converge toward a dark reckoning, in which crimes will be punished and familial struggles played out. It’s a film that feels both urgent and sprawling, iconic and fresh as a daisy pushing up through parched prairie soil.
Bonus features, which are identical for DVD and Blu-ray editions, fall into the decent range. There’s a Q&A with filmmakers, footage of the red carpet premiere and three making-of featurettes: “Enemies Forever: The Characters of Hell or High Water,” “Visualizing the Heart of America” and “Damaged Heroes: The Performances of Hell or High Water.”
I didn’t care for 2009’s reboot of the “Star Trek” franchise or its sequel, which placed me firmly in the minority of public opinion. I think the latest, “Star Trek Beyond,” is the best of the bunch – which is to say, merely mediocre.
The basic premise of this iteration is that the cast of the Enterprise are stranded on a strange planet and must contend with hostile forces. I don’t know about you, but I always thought the TV episodes where Kirk & Co. spent the bulk of their time planetside were usually the worst. I mean, it’s called “Star Trek,” not “Land Trek.”
Get back onto the bridge and do some space-y stuff, I say.
Anyway, while exploring reports of a lost Federation ship in a remote corner of the galaxy, the Enterprise is attacked by a swarm of enemies and destroyed, with Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and the rest escaping and split up on the surface of the mysterious planet. Many are captured by Krall (Idris Elba), a strange alien who’s brewing up a nasty bioweapon.
(I remember when they self-destructed the Enterprise in “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,” and it was a really big deal. Now they go through Enterprises like phaser batteries.)
With J.J. Abrams having decamped to take over the other big science fiction franchise, Star Wars, director Justin Lin takes over. The script was written by Doug Jung and Simon Pegg, who also plays engineer Montgomery Scott. Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, John Cho and Anton Yelchin reprise their roles as Dr. McCoy, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov, respectively.
It’s much more of a self-contained action/adventure than a real progression of the Star Trek mythology. Among other things, Kirk gets to ride an old Earth motorcycle, dazzling his enemies with his rad drifting and jumps. I half expected him to whip out an old Fonzie jacket, too.
It often feels like the movie would do anything to not be a Star Trek movie. Based on the previous two flicks, I think they made the right choice.
Bonus features are excellent, though you’ll have to shell out for the Blu-ray version – the DVD contains exactly none.
These include deleted scenes, gag reel, tributes to deceased stars Leonard Nimoy and Anton Yelchin, a perspective on the 50-year history of Trek with Abrams and the cast, plus seven making-of featurettes touching on every aspect of production, from story creation to special effects.
For a decade or so there’s been a thing in Hollywood called the Black List, which is screenplays that are greatly admired but for some reason haven’t been picked up for production. In general these tend to be smaller, more challenging stories that might not necessarily have mass appeal. The idea is to garner these languishing scripts attention so somebody will make a movie out of them.
Roughly one-third have been, including Best Picture Oscar winners “Argo,” “The King’s Speech,” “Spotlight” and “Slumdog Millionaire.” But there have also been many Black List flops like “Black Snake Moan,” “Our Brand Is Crisis,” “47 Ronin,” etc.
“Hell or High Water,” despite that subpar, generic-sounding title -- I at first thought it had something to do with boats -- belongs among any estimation of home runs.
Deeply moody and evocative, yet with a potboiler plot that steadily builds a head of steam, “Hell” is sharp as a leather strap cracked against bare skin in the scorching West Texas sun.
The film is part crime story, part throwback Western, part family reconciliation. It’s about old cowboys and young, lawmen versus bandits, the sins of bank robbers weighed against those of the bankers. It wears the long prairie duster of the Old West, as hard men wander out of the hot, flat pan and converge toward a grim reckoning.
Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster each deliver some of the best performances of their careers, layered and bone-deep. They’re playing outwardly simplistic men who’ve thought about their lives and found them wanting.
Bridges is Marcus, a Texas Ranger facing mandatory retirement in a few weeks who’d like to go out in a blaze of glory rather than face the terror of sitting on his front porch with no purpose to life.
With a silver mustache, thick middle and a tendency to chew his words like cud, Marcus is a legend fading before his own eyes -- probably been carrying around the same bullets in his sidearm for 15 years. He’s ornery and cussed, likes to insult the hybrid Mexican/Comanche heritage of his partner, then dismiss it as teasing.
“I don’t know how you’re going to survive without someone to outsmart,” the partner (a fine Gil Birmingham) says, giving a little back.
Pine and Foster are Toby and Tanner Howard, brothers both alike and differing in a lot of ways. Toby is reserved, thoughtful, remorseful. His marriage and job have cratered, he’s estranged from his ex-wife and teenage sons, just buried his mother after a long illness and is trying to prevent the bank from foreclosing on the family ranch.
Tanner is a career criminal who calculates he’s spent half of his adult life behind bars, a dead-ender who embraces his outlaw reputation and calls it an ethos. He never makes any plans beyond the limits of the cash in his pocket or what he can steal. He does what he does because he’s good at it and he likes it; as Marcus wryly observes, if Tanner ever got himself a big pile of money he’d probably spend it all on stupid junk just so he could have an excuse to go out and steal again.
The Howard boys are knocking over small-fry banks in tiny Texas towns, places with names like Coleman and Post, sometimes two or three a day. Too small a haul to warrant FBI attention, it’s dropped into Marcus’ lap. He makes the rounds, interviews the witnesses, is confounded by the repeated lack of video surveillance. At first bored, his old juices get flowing again. They’re just the sort of crimes that seem random and stupid, but require a smart mind to string together.
Directed by David Mackenzie (“Young Adam”) from a script by Taylor Sheridan (“Sicario”), this is the sort of movie that’s always on the move but never seems in a hurry. It takes the time to flesh out scenes and polish minor characters, like the sassy waitress who refuses to relinquish the fat tip the brothers left with (maybe) stolen money. Or the elderly cowpoke caught up in one of the robberies who, when asked if he’s armed, spits, “Of course I’ve got a gun!”
“Hell or High Water” is a taut modern masterpiece that learned its lessons well from the classics -- both the tough, unruly Texas folk and the movies made about them.
“The Finest Hours” is in the finest tradition of derring-do true life adventures in which ordinary men did extraordinary things, and you’re going to hear about them.
It’s the story of the 1952 rescue of the SS Pendleton, which was split in two by a fierce storm off New England. Men from the U.S. military’s least-celebrated branch, the Coast Guard, get their moment in the spotlight as we learn how they effected one of the most daring rescues in naval history.
Chris Pine plays Bernie Webber, a crew leader stationed in Cape Cod. He’s a gentle soul, rather dim, speaks as if he’s got a mouthful of cod and crab all the time like any good Greater Bostonite. He actually believes the old seaman’s lore that he has to seek permission from his commander (Eric Bana) before getting married to his girl, Miriam (Holliday Grainger).
Frankly, he’s the guy the other Coast Guard guys pick on, though he’s too oblivious to realize it, and too kind to do anything about it if he did.
But when the storm hits and there’s nobody else to help, Bernie picks a handful of guys and they take off on their tiny powerboat to brave waves the size of cliffs. Ben Foster, one of Hollywood’s most reliable young character actors, shines as Bernie’s unexpectedly loyal right-hand man.
One of the best storytelling decisions by director Craig Gillespie and screenwriters Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson was not to treat the men onboard the Pendleton as faceless and helpless. Casey Affleck plays Ray Sybert, the chief engineer, who organizes his team to keep the remains of the ship afloat. They even rig up a makeshift navigation system using spare parts and spit.
I found the movie interesting because it’s the story of two men, neither of whom are natural born leaders, who stepped into the fray when the call came and found that others looked to them for guidance. The film serves as an appreciation for the alpha male, the fellows who are usually stuck in the background of movies like this.
The seaborne action sequences are well-done and often thrilling. Bernie’s boat actually crashes through the waves rather than trying to go over them, briefly becoming a submersible craft as the desperate men hold their breath. Gillespie lets the seconds tick by as we expect the boat to emerge back into the life-giving air… any moment now…
“The Finest Hours” may not win many points for originality. But it’s a solid blend of action, drama and historical celebration.
Bonus features are pretty good, though you’ll have to spring for the Blu-ray upgrade to get the majority of them. The DVD version comes only with a documentary about the real-life rescuers, “The Finest Inspiration: The U.S. Coast Guard.”
With the Blu-ray edition you get three making-of featurettes: “Against All Odds: The Bernie Webber Story,” “Brotherhood” and “Two Crews.” You also receive firsthand accounts of real-life Coast Guard rescues and two deleted scenes.
I liked “Horrible Bosses” just enough to give it a wobbly recommendation. It was a scattershot-funny comedy with a novel premise: three working stiffs decide to off their evil bosses, with each doing another’s tormentor to throw off suspicion. Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikas and Jason were agreeably dippy as modern guys trying to get medieval, and failing pathetically.
It did well at the box office, so here’s the inevitable sequel, with an almost entirely different set of filmmakers swapped out and anything resembling cleverness leached away.
The setup is that the trio has now left behind the world of worker bee slavery to become their own bosses. They’ve come up with an idea for a product called the Shower Buddy, which, near as I can determine, all it does differently from a regular shower head is also squirt shampoo on you along with the water. The miracles of the modern age!
Still, it does well enough that they launch their company, rent a warehouse, buy some equipment and start hiring employees. There’s a modestly funny montage of them conducting job interviews, with the joke being that they hire absolutely everyone, including the scary ex-con and the woman who can’t speak English.
At first, I thought this would be a deliciously sly bit of satire in which the upstarts themselves turn into the horrible bosses, and another set of underlings decide to kill them, leading to more recriminations and hijinks. Alas, no, it quickly devolves into an unfunny retread of the last movie, but instead of attempted murder they kidnap somebody for ransom.
The heavy here is Christoph Waltz as the magnate of a home products retailer, who agrees to carry the Shower Buddy but then reneges at the last minute, threatening to toss the boys into financial ruin. To get back at him and retrieve their money, they resolve to kidnap the jerk’s even jerkier son, played by Chris Pine. But the kid has a better idea: cut him in on the scam, and they don’t even have to go through with the actual kidnapping.
The lead actors all play familiar versions of their star personas. Bateman is Nick, the careful, slightly repressed one; Day is Dale, the nervous nebbish who now has a wife and triplet baby daughters; Sudeikis is Kurt, the resident horndog because, well, every comedy ensemble needs one.
Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Jamie Foxx all return for cameos of their characters from the original movie, respectively: sadistic boss, now behind bars; sex-addicted dentist, still addicted to sex; and criminal consigliore who’s a lot less badass than he lets on.
Aniston was the MVP of the last movie, and proves so again here. Maybe it’s because she’s largely played sweethearts that the notion of her as a lecherous pervert is especially zingy, but in any case she scores the most laughs with her naughty banter.
The jokes come fast, fast, fast and mostly miss, miss, miss. The script seems barely polished above the level of ad-lib, and largely consists of a bunch of scenes of the crew popping off and cracking on each other.
I’m still a little fuzzy about who exactly the horrible bosses of “Horrible Bosses 2” are supposed to be – the Waltz character may be a tool but he’s not their boss, just a backstabbing customer. Of course, “Horrible Vendor-Client Relationships” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
It is endlessly vexing to me that the fanboy universe collectively dismissed the second trio of “Star Wars” movies as soulless sellouts, but have embraced the new “Star Trek” flicks from director J.J. Abrams enthusiastically.
For my money, Abram’s take on the original Starfleet gang has lacked intellectual heft, and is too reliant on special effects and whiz-bang action scenes. The first movie left me positively spinning, as if James T. Kirk, Spock, Bones and company were incapable of just sitting still and talking for two minutes.
The sequel, “Star Trek Into Darkness,” does better at pacing. The first half is rather agreeable, setting up the characters and conflicts.
But things go off a cliff about halfway through, when the villain (Benedict Cumberbatch) is revealed to be none other than … well, I won’t spoil it for you. But even if you haven’t already heard the worst-kept secret of the movie recycling one of the great bad guys of the Trek universe, it’s pretty easy to figure out.
Kirk (Chris Pine) and the Enterprise get sent into Klingon territory to kill some terrorists who sprung a devastating surprise attack on Starfleet headquarters. Assassinations are not really in the rule book, setting up more conflict between captain, Spock (Zachary Quinto) and crew. The plot thickens further when it’s revealed other forces are at play.
The end devolves into a rather predictable exchange of phaser fire and fisticuffs, with the secondary characters relegated to hanging around in the fringes and reacting to barked orders. Remember when Sulu and Chekov actually, like, did stuff?
Personally, I’d rather watch a Jar-Jar Binks Christmas special than either of the new Star Trek movies again.
Video extras are decent, but only if you spring for the Blu-ray edition – the DVD comes with exactly zero goodies.
Several featurettes accompany the Blu-ray version, mostly going behind the scenes of various big-tent sequences such as the attack on Starfleet or creating the Klingon home world of Kronos.
A cheap, shiny whizbang toy, "Star Trek Into Darkness" is essentially a remake of an earlier, better film from the same franchise. I won't tell you which one because of spoilerfication and all, but if you've paid the least amount of attention to the hype surrounding director J.J. Abrams' sequel to his 2009 hit film, you already know. And even if you hadn't, you can guess pretty easily.
Benedict Cumberbatch -- most British name ever! -- is the new mystery figure, an arrogant and brilliant fellow who seems to have it in for Starfleet in general and Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise in particular. He also possesses superhuman strength and reflexes, a genius intellect that transcends the ages, and ... well, I've already said too much.
As regular visitors to this page know, I was a lonely voice in opposition to Abrams' first film, finding it an over-caffeinated amusement park ride lacking any pretense toward the cerebral heft that has been a hallmark of the Trek universe, even in its silliest moments.
I will say that this film, written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, takes its time from a narrative sense, and doesn't feel like it needs to have its characters in constant motion, perpetually in peril. The first hour or so is quite engaging, as the filmmakers carefully move the pieces into place.
It's still a preposterously doofy take on the Star Trek oeuvre, with a "reboot" of the universe that allows Abrams & Co. to keep the bones of the dynamic the same while changing around the outer layers liberally.
Thus if you'll recall: Captain Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) is now a shoot-from-the-hip punk with a troubled past, yet somehow placed in charge of Starfleet's newest, most advanced starship. Spock (Zachary Quinto) is still an emotionless Vulcan, but is more in touch with the potential for feelings. In this iteration, Kirk and Spock are constantly at odds, with the first officer questioning his captain at every turn.
Uhura, Bones, Scotty and Sulu ... well, they're pretty much the same (played by Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg and John Cho, respectively).
One of the biggest annoyances is the continuing, unlikely romance between Spock and Uhura, which has all the emotional weight of a feather duster. They repeatedly have couple spats, even right on the bridge of the Enterprise or in the middle of a mission, in front of other officers and crew. I find it highly illogical that people who have pledged their careers to Starfleet would behave so unprofessionally.
As for the plot, suffice it to say that Starfleet is threatened when a key facility is attacked by a rogue officer named John Harrison (Cumberbatch). Admiral Marcus (Peter Weller), the commander in chief, reluctantly dispatches Kirk and the Enterprise into Klingon territory to kill him.
He also insists that they take with them a load of super-secret torpedoes that they fire indiscriminately at Harrison. The torpedoes come with their own perky weapons specialist (Alice Eve) who, like everyone else in the cast, looks like she stepped out of an Abercrombie & Fitch ad.
What, does Starfleet weed out all the fat and fugly recruits early on?
The torpedoes are shielded so the crew can't see what's inside them, which makes Scotty very nervous. With that set-up, if you can't figure out what's the secret of the weapons, then this must be the first science fiction movie you've seen, ever.
Once "John Harrison" reveals his true identity around the halfway point, the film lost me completely. From that point onward, I knew everything that was going to happen, exactly as it would go down. Granted, I like to think I'm pretty good at seeing the pitches before they're thrown, but this is Pee Wee-level foreshadowing.
A tribble even shows up in Bones' laboratory to provide a laugh and set up an obvious plot point.
This entire movie is a consequence-free zone. Nothing that happens has weight. For example, early on Kirk is demoted and loses command of the Enterprise ... and then gets it right back a few minutes later. The Enterprise also gets seriously damaged in combat. That had an impact back in "Star Trek III," but since then how many Enterprises have been destroyed or seriously effed up? Half a dozen, it seems.
The Enterprise, once a distinct character in the films, is now just another ship. Blast it with phasers, punch holes in its side -- it's just hardware to be repaired or replaced.
I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of someone else remaking the Trek movies I loved as a youth. But I don't like it when they're slick and intellectual lightweight like this one and its predecessor.
It's funny to me that so many people attacked the second trilogy of "Star Wars" as soulless and cynical corruptions of an original purity, but see the new "Star Trek" flicks as a bold return to form. For me, I don't need to see the best moments of "Trek" repurposed for a younger audience with a short attention span.
It didn’t get nominated for an Academy Award for animated feature, while lackluster fare like “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” did. And DreamWorks Animation recently announced layoffs after “Rise of the Guardians” underperformed at the box office. (Though it made $300 million worldwide, which is hardly bomb territory.)
Don’t buy the bunk. “Guardians” is easily the best animated movie from last year.
It might seem silly and superficial at first: Santa Claus, Jack Frost and other holiday icons band together into a super-powered group to battle evil – think “The Avengers” in rainbow-hued costumes. But they’ve got butt-kicking superpowers; for instance, the Easter Bunny is now a martial arts expert, while Santa wields a pair of swords.
Also on the team are the Tooth Fairy and Sandman. They’re up against Pitch Black, aka the bogeyman, who wants to blanket the world in darkness and bad dreams.
The animation is wonderfully detailed and crisp, and the action scenes well-staged. Alec Baldwin, Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Jude Law and Ilsa Fisher make up a terrific voice cast.
But what pushes “Rise of the Guardians” over the hump from good to great is its surprising emotional resonance. There’s a great subtext about finding your place in the world as seen through Jack Frost’s struggle to learn the origin of his powers.
This one’s a family-friendly treat.
Extras are decent, bending more toward the fun than the substantial. The DVD comes with a featurette on the cast and crew, filmmakers’ commentary track and “Sandy’s Dream Guide,” which helps interpret your dreams. There’s also a DVD-ROM function with printable Eastern-themed egg holders and coloring sheets.
Upgrade to the Blu-ray edition, and you add “Behind the Magic,” a comprehensive making-of documentary, plus a feature on author William Joyce. You also get two interactive games: “Rock, Paper, Scissors with Sandy” and “Jack Frost Snowball Showdown!”.
This has been a down year for animated films, but “Rise of the Guardians” arrives for the holidays just in time to stoke enthusiasm for family-friendly movies.
This visually dazzling and emotionally affecting tale sounds gimmicky at first, what with giving Santa Claus and other holiday icons the super-hero treatment, banding them together into a supergroup set to battle evil a la “The Avengers.”
Santa certainly looks the part, morphed into a sword-wielding brute with a buff physique that’s more WWE than bowlful of jelly. He even has corresponding “Naughty” and “Nice” ‘tats on his burly arms, plus a fearsome, Slavic-tinged growl (courtesy of Alec Baldwin).
The Easter Bunny (voiced by Hugh Jackman) is even more pumped up, turned into an Australian-accented 6-foot badass rabbit with moves like Bruce Lee and an arsenal of boomerangs and other weapons on his bandolier.
And have you checked out Jack Frost? As voiced by Chris Pine, Jack is depicted as an impish teenage skater-boy rapscallion, using his magic staff to spread sudden blasts of cold air and mischief wherever he goes. With a flyaway platinum hairdo, bare feet (brrr!) and contemptuous smirk, he resembles every parent’s worst apprehensions for underachieving offspring.
Directed by first-timer Peter Ramsey based on the books by William Joyce, “Guardians” would at first appear to be nothing more than an action-packed thrill ride for slightly older kiddies – the sort who prefer Wii games to “Sesame Street.” But screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) adds subtle layers of heftier thematic elements that lift the material to a higher plane.
The result is a terrific blend of PG-rated battles and soulful character dynamics.
The story begins with Jack Frost’s birth as a creature of magic, and subsequent induction into the Guardians – powerful beings who protect the children of the world. In addition to Santa and the Easter Bunny, the other members are the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), who resembles a multi-hued hummingbird, and the Sandman, a mute little fellow whose golden sands send out happy dreams.
The Guardians derive their powers from the belief wee ones invest in them. Alas, that makes them susceptible to dastardly types like Pitch Black, aka the Bogeyman, who specializes in sowing cynicism and turning dreams into nightmares. He launches his attack on the outposts of the Guardians one by one, turning Easter into a dud and leaving all those teeth waiting under pillows unexchanged.
The filmmakers make a bold choice by making Pitch, voiced in a devilish purr by Jude Law, as alternately soothing and threatening. He’s even somewhat sympathetic, since his big beef is that he’s perpetually forced to hide in the shadows where no one believes in him, or even acknowledges his existence.
This is the same challenge facing Jack Frost. He moves unseen amidst the human world, gifting children with closed schools and snowball fights, but never receiving acknowledgement for his efforts. It’s a simple yet powerful metaphor easily grasped by child and adult alike – finding your place in the world so you won’t be ignored.
The computer-generated animation is a dizzy delight, filled with lots of kinetic energy and audacious camera moves. I adored how Santa’s elves resemble little pointed hats with bells, and serve more as amusing mascots while yetis do all the real work of building toys. Ditto for the Bunny’s enchanted forest, where the eggs help decorate themselves for the Easter hunt.
I went into “Rise of the Guardians” not expecting very much, and walked out convinced I had just seen the best animated movie of the year. What a gift.
"People Like Us" is a tearjerker, and is pretty straightforward about it. I don't have an issue with movies that don't pretend to be something other than what they are. Where I do have a problem is when they aren't successful at it.
To wit: no tears of mine were jerked by this movie.
Speaking of jerks: "People Like Us" is filled with them. At some point during the film I kept thinking, "Wow, I really hope there aren't a lot of people like them in the real world." If there are, this is one sad, bitter little globe we're riding as it hurtles through space.
This wannabe-weepy drama is about a young jerk who is the son of an old jerk who up and dies, leaving young jerk with only bitter memories of old jerk. That, plus a shaving bag filled with $150,000 in cash and a terse note instructing him to deliver it to a single mother who turns out to be the sister he never knew he had.
Young jerk, whose actual name is Sam, is in a tough spot because he could really use the money himself. His gig is "corporate bartering," which means buying up overstock of various goods and sundries and trading it for something else. Except Sam bartered a little too fast and loose, and now the feds are breathing down his neck about some rotten tomatoes, or something.
(Quick aside: the federal inquiry is instigated by an unhappy client -- the one with the tomatoes -- and the investigator starts calling Sam and his boss the very same day it's reported to tell them they're being investigated. That's a pretty responsive bureaucracy.)
Anyway, rather than telling the woman, whose name is Frankie, the whole deal and plopping the money down, Sam start following her around, and also her 11-year-old son Josh. He does said stalking while driving his father's fire engine red 1972 Mercury Marquis convertible, a great flaming beast of a car, which somehow does not attract anyone's attention.
Soon Sam has ingratiated himself into their lives, becoming a father figure to young Josh and a support system for Frankie, who's a recovering alcoholic working as a bartender (a Hollywood fabrication, if ever there was one).
The problem with this plot is that it's one of those stories that pivots entirely on the fulcrum of the One Big Lie. An untruth is told -- or as in this case the truth is withheld -- and the rest of the movie turns into an exercise in waiting around until the moment when everything is revealed. So the only real surprise is in seeing how extreme the reaction to the truth will be. (In this case, it's over the top.)
The screenplay is by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert, who inform us this was "inspired by true life." Kurtzman, a TV veteran, directs with little sense of rhythm. The movie turns into a push-pull of characters coming together, then pushing each other away, then back again. It feels like a collection of encounters rather than a knitted whole.
The cast seems a little too perfect for their own good. Chris Pine as Sam brings little to the table that we haven't seen from other rogue-with-good-intentions characters. Elizabeth Banks plays Frankie with more success, as a tough woman putting up a good front over her nagging fears that she's a terrible person and a worse mother. Both are made-up to look scruffy and well-worn, but in a gorgeous Hollywood sort of way.
Michael Hall D'Addario is convincing as Josh, using spot-on facial expressions to show how he reacts to the adults around him with disdain or enthusiasm, depending on what mood strikes. Kids that age are like a combination safe, and few parents get it right more than once in a while.
Michelle Pfeiffer and Olivia Wilde have underwritten roles as, respectively, Sam's mom and girlfriend. They're composed less as flesh-and-blood people than as tools to facilitate Sam's emotional journey -- even if they have to behave illogically to do so.
"People Like Us" is the sort of story that would have worked better as a tiny-budget indie film with actors you never heard of. It feels like a meal that's been jazzed up with too much flimflam and unnecessary seasoning, instead of concentrating on blending a few key ingredients well.
Rather than making the audience sad, it makes us feel sad for it.
"Unstoppable" is an exercise in lean, efficient storytelling. This tale about a runaway train and the two men who set out to stop it won't win any awards for originality or sophistication. But as a straightforward story about workaday guys who become heroes, its nimbleness is unassailable.
Denzel Washington plays Frank Barnes, a veteran train engineer who, along with a bunch of other old-timers, is about to be forcibly retired by the company in favor of youngsters like Will Colson (Chris Pine). To add insult to injury, Frank's been assigned to train Will -- speeding up his own obsolescence.
Both have static in their private lives that intrudes on their work. Will's just had a major dust-up with his wife, leading to a separation and court appearance, while Frank, a widower, is laboring to stay connected with his quickly maturing teen daughters. Neither has much patience for guff their new partner.
Their simmering old-vs.-young enmity gets put on the back burner when a train containing explosive chemicals becomes a runaway, threatening to wipe out an entire city. Will and Frank first must dodge the speeding juggernaut, and then chase it down and stop it.
Screenwriter Mark Bomback and director Tony Scott know how to hit the action beats for maximum visceral impact, and how to capitalize off Washington's considerable onscreen magnetism. Frank's a bit gruff and grizzled, but audiences instinctively root for him.
Throw in a half-dozen distinctive supporting characters -- Rosario Dawson shines as the sensible dispatcher back at HQ, as does Lew Temple as an offbeat man-in-the-field -- and "Unstoppable" becomes an unspectacular but undeniably entertaining flick.
Like the movie itself, video extras are solid but not extravagant.
The DVD comes with a commentary track by Scott and "Tracking the Story," a featurette about script development.
On top of these, the Blu-ray also comes with several other features, including an anatomy of a derailment scene, stunt work, cast and crew comments and so on.
I enjoyed "Unstoppable" much more than I thought I would. It's a slick, efficient thriller built around the enormously charismatic screen presence of Denzel Washington. It doesn't set any standards for originality and is about as subtle as a sledgehammer -- or a runaway train.
But as popcorn-munching entertainment, its proficiency is undeniable.
Washington plays Frank Barnes, a 28-year veteran railroad engineer. Frank is a prototypical Washington protagonist: He's good at what he does but doesn't flaunt it. He's friendly without being obsequious, and doesn't take guff from anyone. A widower, Frank loves his two teen daughters, and pretends that their working at Hooters doesn't bother him.
When Will Colson (Chris Pine) presents himself as his new trainee, Frank is all business: "If you don't know something, ask me." He goes about showing Will the ropes without animosity, even though the company is in the process of putting old-timers like him out to pasture and replacing them with whippersnappers like Will.
Each man has some static in his personal life. Will is currently separated from his wife and son, and there's even something about a court hearing and a restraining order. Meanwhile, Frank has forgotten his daughter's birthday, and is getting the cold shoulder from her.
When a careless rail yard worker (Ethan Suplee) lets a train get away unmanned, it sets off a chain reaction of events, building to a statewide emergency. It turns out the train, dubbed "Triple-7," is loaded with some nasty chemicals that could destroy an entire town. Frank and Will at first are on a collision course, and then volunteer themselves to stop the runaway.
The secondary characters present themselves as distinct and colorful. Connie (Rosario Dawson) is the dispatcher back at headquarters who acts as the voice of reason. Kevin Dunn is Gavin, the corporate honcho who plays the heavy, failing to listen to the people in the field who know what they're doing. Kevin Corrigan plays Werner, an inspector who was supposed to give a presentation to some school kids but instead adds his encyclopedic knowledge to the rescue effort.
I especially liked Lew Temple as Ned, an odd railroad worker who's sort of the X factor, blazing around in his huge red truck. Ned's the type of guy totally lacking in social skills, who bores people to death talking about the technical details of his job, but you want him around in a crisis.
This is the fourth movie director Tony Scott and Washington have made together, and the second in a row after another train movie, "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3." Scott's an old, expert hand at this sort of adrenaline-fueled material, and knows just how to hit the action beats for maximum impact.
The original screenplay by Mark Bomback is an exercise in lean storytelling: Just enough detail and background to give the main characters some layers, but jettisoning anything that detracts from the boiling plot.
The movie is loosely based on the "Crazy Eights" train incident from 2001. Interestingly, that happened in Ohio, while "Unstoppable" is set in Pennsylvania -- but was filmed largely in the Buckeye State.
"Unstoppable" is evocative of the economically depressed Midwest, and celebrates the type of no-nonsense blue-collar manhood that's been hardest hit by the Great Recession. It's an engaging action/thriller in which no one pulls out a gun or throws a punch, and that's something.
