Review: "Gemini Man"

It’s one thing for a character to say they’re haunted by ghosts; it’s quite another to show the ghosts. “Gemini Man” does the former while scrimping on the latter.

I’ll be straight: I was prepared to duck the screening for “Gemini Man.” It’s a busy time of year and there’s a lot of movies to pay attention to. The trailers, in which Will Smith, playing a world-class assassin who encounters a younger CGI’d double of himself, looked pretty goofy.

Digital alteration of reality continues to advance, and we’ve all seen those freaky-deaky “deep fake” videos of Bill Hader transforming into Arnold Schwarzenegger or whatnot. But the truth is it still hasn’t gotten to the point where it’s totally convincing. So I was prepared to give “Gemini” a skip.

Then I saw the creative team: Ang Lee (“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) directing? Two of the screenwriters are David Benioff (“Game of Thrones”) and Billy Ray (an Oscar nominee for “Captain Phillips”)? The credentials are there, maybe the film’s better than advertised?

Nope.

It’s not a bad movie by any means. It’s got lots of vigorous action scenes, including a killer one where the two warriors battle on motorcycles, with the younger one using the bike itself as a weapon. There are also exotic international locales, a sniveling villain, and other hallmarks of the spy thriller genre. In terms of action set pieces, it’s basically a low-rent Bond film.

But that’s all it is. Lee and the screenwriters (Darren Lemke is the third) make aspirations toward something deeper and more meaningful, but keep falling back on stunts and shootouts instead of exploring the main characters’ inner psyches.

Smith plays Henry Brogan, a legendary sniper for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s spent 30 years making impossible kill shots, dubbed AMFs -- “Adios, Mother Flipper,” or thereabouts -- such as the one that opens the picture of a terrorist getting it through the window of a speeding European bullet train. Now after 72 confirmed kills he’s ready to hang it up, citing age, fading skills and the aforementioned ghosts.

Turns out the last kill wasn’t a clean one, but cooked up by old nemesis Clay Verris, played by Clive Owen in full jowls-and-scowls mode. He runs the titular Gemini program, a quasi-military force used by governments to clean up their messes. And they’ve concluded that Henry is the loose tie that needs to be snipped.

We’ve seen this before in every spy franchise, from Bond to Bourne to Jack Reacher. Someone in the government decides the veteran killer needs to be killed, racking up tremendous deaths and expenditure of resources in the process, necessitating even more stuff to throw at the guy.

At some point I’d like to see a movie where an armchair spymaster says, “You know what? Better just leave him be.”

Gemini’s secret weapon is Junior (also Smith), who was cloned from Henry’s DNA. The young man has spent his entire life being trained by Verris to be the ultimate killer. He’s got all of Henry’s moves plus a few parkour-style bits where he bounces off walls and such. But does he have the same hidden conscious eating away at him, suggesting all his jobs may not be on the up-and-up?

As I said, the likeness is not terrible, akin to Smith during his “Fresh Prince” days. He acted out the role normally and then a younger version of his face was digitally stitched on. It works OK in fleeting shots or darkness, but when the camera has to hold in bright light, it has a very video game feel.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Danny, a DIA agent sent to tail Henry who ends up becoming his capable ally. She and Henry flirt in between the firefights, while pretending not to. Douglas Hodge and Benedict Wong are old friends brought in to help out.

The dialogue is truly cringe-worthy at times, with lines such as “It’s like watching the Hindenburg crash into the Titanic.” My personal (dis)favorite is Henry waking up Danny in bed and she pulls a pistol on him. “It’s not gun time, it’s coffee time,” he purrs, handing her a brimming mug. What the…?

I was expecting “Gemini Man” to be more a psychological thriller interspersed with action scenes about two hardcases with intertwined identities, a la “Face/Off.” But it’s just a straight-up action movie featuring Old Will Smith and digitally de-aged Will Smith.

It’s garden-variety gunplay, with a Benjamin Button twist.

Video review: "The Hollars"

John Krasinski’s second feature film as a director and star isn’t terribly ambitious, but it gathers together a truly wonderful cast and gives them interesting things to say and do. Margo Martindale and Richard Jenkins both fall into that tiniest category of actors I think of as “people I would pay to read my medicine bottles.” They’re always distinctive and alive.

Toss in Anna Kendrick, Sharlto Copley, Charlize Day, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Krasinski himself, and that’s enough reason to choose “The Hollars” for a home viewing right there.

Krasinski plays John Hollar, a typical arrested-development sort who can’t get his career or personal life out of first gear. He’s got an amazing girlfriend (Kendrick) who’s pregnant with his baby, but he hasn’t put a ring on it.

When family matriarch/rock Sally (Martindale) falls ill, dad Don (Jenkins) more or less dissolves into a puddle, while wayward son Ron (Copley) is dealing with his own issues, losing both his job and his family. Meanwhile, the Hollar family business is going under.

So John returns to a scene of chaos and resentment, as all these sharp divides must be spackled together with love and trust.

Everything goes exactly as you’d expect. Most of the time I dislike movies that are completely predictable. But “The Hollars” has genuine heart and some snappy dialogue courtesy of script man Jim Strouse.

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you won’t get even a hint of any real surprises. But I doubt anyone who watches this film will consider it time ill spent.

Bonus features are decent. Krasinski and Martindale team up for a feature length commentary track, and there’s also a Q&A with the two plus Kendrick from the LA Film Festival. It also comes with two featurettes: “Persistent Vision: Margo Martindale” and “The Family Trust: Inside The Hollars.”

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Review: "The Hollars"

“You won’t know till you get there that you’re OK.”
--Sally Hollar

On points for originality, “The Hollars” scores a great big goose egg. It’s an overly familiar recitation of the Going Home dramedy, in which a wayward adult returns to their childhood home because of some kind of family crisis and has to face a lot of old fears and doubts, heaped on top of some new ones.

But this cast is just amazing: Margo Martindale, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Sharlto Copley, Charlie Day, Mary Elizabeth Winstead. And, of course, John Krasinski (“The Office”), who stars, produces as well as directing his second feature film.

It’s a warm-hearted story that delivers exactly what you expect, yet never has a false moment or trips over any pretensions.

This movie is a big ol’ slice of pecan pie. The taste is like a memory etched into your mind, yet you can’t help finding yourself asking for more. This is the rare movie I actually wished was a bit longer.

John Hollar (Krasinski) lives in New York City and labors in misery as a graphic artist for an advertising firm. He’s got an amazing girlfriend, Rebecca (Anna Kendrick), who’s very pregnant with their child. But he hasn’t put a ring on it, and obviously has cold feet about the sudden push into real adulthood.

Back home things aren’t much happier. (The exact location of the Hollar homestead isn’t specified, but I’d guess somewhere small-town Midwest.)

The father, Don (Richard Jenkins), projects outward stoicism concealing a jumpy bundle of nerves. The family business is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Oldest son Ron (Sharlto Copley) is the resident screw-up; he’s back living in his parents’ basement after being fired by his boss -- that would be his dad -- and is long divorced. He’s taken to spying on the house where his ex-wife and daughters live.

Margo Martindale is Sally, the matriarch and spiritual center of the clan. Don even calls her “Chief,” tacitly acknowledging her prominence. As the story opens she collapses in the bathroom, which at first Don dismisses as a prank. He’s anything but mean-spirited; he’s just rested on that Rock of Gibraltar so long he just assumes Sally is immortal. But tests reveal a large brain tumor.

John returns home, and it’s apparent he was disconnected from his family long before he left. But his momma treats him with patience, knowing the sheep has to wander back to the herd on its own rather than being led. She offers opinions, gives comfort and accept some, too. Martindale is just a wondrous performer, and projects the wave of fear Sally is experiencing underneath a tough game face.

“I like Rebecca,” she tells John. “She’s pushy. Men need to be pushed.”

Rebecca herself soon arrives too, due in part to some tension with an old girlfriend of John’s (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who is now married to Sally’s nurse, Jason (the always acerbic Charlie Day). We think it’s going to turn into a love triangle, but the third leg is not the one we expect.

The screenplay by Jim Strouse stays firmly in the groove of laughing-while-crying melodrama, decidedly sentimental without ever wallowing into sappy. There are a lot of great one-liners – such as Sally, fretting over having to have her head shaved for surgery, predicting she’ll “look like Rod Steiger.”

This is the sort of movie that rises and falls on the strength of its cast, and it’s got a doozy. There’s so much heart in the Hollars; watching a film about them is like a warm, wet hug.

Video review: "10 Cloverfield Lane"

“10 Cloverfield Lane” was a mystery wrapped in an enigma slathered with clever marketing. A low-budget sci-fi/thriller that began as an original story about people trapped in an underground bunker, it morphed into a sorta-sequel to “Cloverfield,” a successful 2008 monsters-from-space flick produced by J.J. Abrams.

If you’re looking for continuity between the two cinematic universes, keep looking. But as a standalone piece of filmmaking, it’s decently engrossing.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays Michelle, a woman going through personal turmoil right as the Earth seems to be experiencing some cataclysmic troubles she hears about on her car radio. Then a truck runs her off the road, she’s knocked out and wakes up in a creepy cellar.

The proprietor is Howard (John Goodman), a twitchy conspiracy theory sort who built the elaborate bunker in fear of Russian/Chinese attacks. As far as he’s concerned, that’s what has happened, and the poisonous air (he says) will be unbreathable for at least a year or two. So the three of them – John Gallagher Jr. plays Howard’s dimwitted wingman – have to just settle in for the long haul.

Things grow more tense as the days pass, with Howard attempting to assert patriarchal control over their little ersatz family. Michelle’s skepticism about Howard’s story festers, leading to escape attempts and confrontations.

It’s a fun movie to watch, even as you can hear the gears of the storytelling process grinding away. “10 Cloverfield Lane” contains few surprises, but it does what it does well enough.

Bonus features are a little skimpy; the DVD contains exactly none. The Blu-ray version has a feature-length commentary track by director Dan Trachtenberg and Abrams plus 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage from the production.

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Review: "10 Cloverfield Lane"

So people are excited about "10 Cloverfield Lane" because it was made in ultra secrecy and has been touted as a sorta-sequel to "Cloverfield," the 2008 found-footage hit thriller about giant monsters attacking the Earth, both of which were produced by "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" wunderkind J.J. Abrams (though he didn't write or direct either).

It's about people stuck in an underground shelter after some kind of attack has rendered the air above toxic. John Goodman plays the guy who built the place and runs it like a dictator, Mary Elizabeth Winstead is his guest/captive, and we're trying to figure out if his story is legit or he just kidnapped her.

The movie is reasonably enjoyable and engaging as a popcorn flick, though it often thinks it's being coy when really it telegraphs its punches pretty badly. Start with the title treatment in the opening credits, where the L's at the beginning and end of "Cloverfield" extend upward and downward, respectively becoming the "1" in 10 and the "L" in Lane.

"See?" the movie nudges us. "I'm the next chapter."

So how much of a sequel is this film, really? My normal inclination is not to blab too much about a movie that so obviously cherishes its secrets. But I feel like the filmmakers and promoters are engaging in some major trickery-dickery here.

So I'll just give a straight answer: Not so much.

"Lane" started as a completely original script by John Campbell and Matt Stuecken called "The Cellar," and over time got slathered with some Cloverfield sauce. Damien Chazelle of "Whiplash" was brought in to punch up the script. Dan Trachtenberg, who has various credits for technical work, makes his debut in the director's chair.

There are thematic similarities between the two films, but there's little continuity in the stories. It's questionable if they even take place in the same fictional universe.

Let's be blunt: The title is more about marketing than fidelity to an artistic impulse. "Cloverfield" was a low-budget ($25 million) science fiction film that made a bunch of money. "10 Cloverfield Lane" is an ultra-low-budget movie ($5 million) that falls more in the horror/mystery territory, which typically generates little buzz or ticket sales. It's the sort of movie that comes out in March and is usually quickly forgotten. Now it's guaranteed to have a big opening at the least.

I don't begrudge Abrams & Co. for a little chicanery to pump interest in their movie. But I'm certainly not going to go along with the ruse.

Winstead is the best thing about the movie. She's a wonderful actress who, like Brie Larson, has toiled from a young age doing often spectacular work ("Smashed") in movies that don't reach the public consciousness. She plays Michelle, a typical cinematic heroine: smart, independent, kind of disconnected from others.

As the story opens she's just walked out on her boyfriend, leaving behind her house keys and an engagement ring, but taking a bottle of single-malt scotch. While driving she hears some stuff on the radio about mass blackouts in cities, then a truck smashes into her and knocks her car down a hill.

She wakes up in a blank grey room, a brace on her knee, blood matted on her head and an IV in her arm. She's been stripped of most of her clothes, and the brace is handcuffed to the wall. Needless to say, she's freaking out. But Michelle manages to retrieve her clothes and phone from a pile in the corner, showing us she's resourceful and tough. Alas, no cell signal.

Then Howard (Goodman) shows up, and she's obviously thinking about twisted torture/rape/death scenarios. Howard, burly and bearded and wearing a sidearm, gives her few reasons for comfort. He's not overtly threatening, but issues dark warnings about her being thankful for his generosity and hospital. I saved your life, Howard insists.

Eventually Michelle earns tiny portions of freedom, and knowledge. They're in an elaborate underground bunker Howard built over the last few years. He's an ex-Navy man who worked on satellites and has some kooky ideas about alien invaders. The Martians' weapons will make the Russian arsenal look like sticks and stones, he insists.

One of the film's problems is that Howard's paranoia and malevolence should gradually grow over time, but the filmmakers turn him up to Full Kray-Kray right away. He's got the squirrelly stare, hand fidgets, sudden rages, etc. This serves to spoil impending surprises, which I'll not share.

Anyway, Howard insists the air is poison and they'll have to stay for a year or two -- at least. He's got plenty of provisions, an "aquaponic" air filtration system, some DVDs and VHS tapes, puzzles and board games.

There's also a sidekick: Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), a young local yokel who helped Howard build the shelter. He's got a busted shoulder received (he says) while forcing his way into the shelter after the attacks started, which took the form of biblical flashes of light far off.

Pretty soon a dynamic establishes itself: Michelle doubts Howard's story, even after Emmett verifies parts of it; Howard's behavior becomes even more strange and volatile -- he insists that the trio not touch each other, for instance; and Michelle recruits Emmett, a dim ex-jock type, into launching an escape plan.

I'll stop here with the plot description, since that's all you need to know and this is usually the dullest stretch of any film review.

Random aside: I was bothered that Winstead's character spends the entire time in the shelter barefoot, while Emmett and Howard always wear clunky shitkicker boots. We see her own shoes in the pile of clothes when she first wakes up, so how come she never puts them on? Is this a visual token of her subservience and vulnerability? A comment on Howard's archaic views on gender roles? A nod to the foot fetish demographic?

"10 Cloverfield Lane" is a pretty decent standalone film. It's got some solid scares and chills, along with a few dead spots. It's 105 minutes long and would have been better at 95.

As a sequel, though, it's a total con job.

Review: "Kill the Messenger"

Gary Webb's career was killed not so much by the CIA as by professional jealousy. His stories, first published in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996, alleged that the CIA engineered, or at least willingly allowed, money from drug trafficking in the U.S. to support the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration.

These facts would be largely corroborated by subsequent government investigations. But Webb, first hailed as a journalistic hero, was systematically torn apart by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The new film about Webb's story and its aftermath, "Kill the Messenger," portrays the editors at the big national papers as incensed that they had been scooped by a perceived inferior competitor.

If this sounds far-fetched, then you've never worked at a newspaper. They can be insular, fiercely protective enclaves, both internally and especially in dealing with rivals. When you beat them on a moderately big story, they try to ignore it -- as if the very fact that they didn't run anything about it diminishes its importance.

If you beat the other team at a really big story, the story often becomes about you. Webb found himself celebrated, then targeted, then summarily drummed out of the business. He committed suicide seven years later.

But the wider availability of information in the Internet age prompted many to follow up on his big story and legacy, including Nick Schou, who wrote the book "Kill the Messenger" upon which this movie is based, along with Webb's own tome, "Dark Alliance."

Jeremy Renner plays Webb as a prototypically normal family man, who likes to hang out with his kids and tinker with motorcycles. Except, that is, when he gets a bite of a good story -- then he becomes a Rottweiler, not just unwilling but biologically incapable of letting go.

The film, directed by Michael Cuesta from a screenplay by Peter Landesman, is firmly in Webb's corner as a righteous journalist done wrong by the powers that be. Oliver Platt and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who play his editors, practically leak air as turncoats who have their reporter's back, until they don't.

The movie similarly starts stronger and then grows fuzzy around the edges. The first half, as Webb meticulously hunts down leads, most of them from the underworld of South and Central America cocaine traffickers, shows the drudgery of investigative journalism, sparked by occasional electricity when connections are made.

The second half gets a little repetitive and dreary, as the backlash against Webb grows, reputedly inspired by a concerted effort by the CIA itself. Shadowy figures start hanging out around Webb's home, and mute men in suits paw through his papers without even a by-your-leave.

The relationship between Webb and his wife (Rosemarie DeWitt) follows the traditional line in these sorts of movies, where the loving, understanding spouse grows concerned about how invested their partner is in their work, pushes back, and eventually dire choices must be made. They seem to fall in and out of love in just a few ticks on the clock.

The good outweighs the bad in "Kill the Messenger," but like Webb's reporting -- prone to exaggeration and theatricality, but essentially true -- it tries too hard at embellishing a good tale that needed no help.

Review: "The Spectacular Now"

The irony inherent in the title of "The Spectacular Now" is that living in the moment means you could be jeopardizing all the moments ahead of you. So it behooves you to make the right now terrific -- or at least convince yourself it is.

Perhaps that's why Sutter Keely is a walking fountain of self-affirmation, constantly commenting rosily on whatever his current situation is: "This is awesome!" "I love all of you guys!" "Together, we're invincible or something!"

As played graciously by Miles Teller, Sutter is the very model of self-composed joviality. He works so very hard at appearing laidback and uncaring. He's fine-tuned his patter to such a perfect pitch, fooling teachers, parents and fellow high school seniors, that he's even bought into his own myth.

Sutter is a man without a plan, and stubbornly so. When we first meet him he's crafting a college application essay sure to get a quick toss from every reputable institution in the U.S. He's writing blithely about getting dumped by his girlfriend, Cassidy (Brie Larson), with whom he was half of the most popular couple in school.

He blows off the breakup, and quickly latches onto Aimee Finecky (Shailene Woodley) on the rebound. She's a quiet, driven girl who practically disappears into the crowd of their school -- in other words, she's Sutter's polar opposite.

It's pretty obvious to anyone watching that Sutter is hoping to inspire enough jealousy in Cassidy to spur her back into his arms, but she soon hooks up with an overachieving jock (Dayo Okeniyi) and Sutter finds himself stuck.

It's also rather evident that Aimee is completely clueless in the ways of romance, even the teen kind, and takes all her cues from Sutter. He sort of latches onto her, and part of his personality begins to bleed into hers.

One of the primary ways is drinking. While occasionally getting blackout drunk at weekend parties, Sutter has achieved functional alcoholism at age 17, skating through the day with a near-constant buzz. He carries a flask and spikes his omnipresent oversized soda to keep it going.

Soon enough Aimee is following suit, and we sense it's only a matter of time before their pairing leads to disaster. Woodley, so good as the frustrated daughter in "The Descendants," practically aches with innocence, so clearly thrilled to finally "have a thing," aka to be defined in some way -- even if it is as the class cutup's girl.

Director James Ponsoldt, who directed last year's largely unseen "Smashed," is clearly fascinated by stories of addiction and self-destruction. While alcoholism isn't as front and center as it was in that film, "The Spectacular Now" is the story of people who are on their way to serious problems.

Alcohol is easily accessible, taken as matter-of-fact, and consumed copiously. Parents are largely absent or indifferent.

I especially liked the way Ponsoldt strives to make his actors seem like real teens, blemishes and all -- quite literally, in fact. Teller and Woodley display the spotty complexions and scars of flesh-and-blood young people.

The screenplay is by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, who wrote the wonderful "(500) Days of Summer" a few years ago, based on a novel by Tim Tharp. Its strength is never feeling forced or constructed, the dialogue and exchanges organic and unforced.

At times, though, I felt like the story focused too much on Sutter's problems and not enough on Aimee's motivations and emotional identity. He is the subject of the movie, and she is the object whom he acts upon.

But even if it is a character portrait rather than a star-crossed love story, "The Spectacular Now" lives its moments with bravery and truth.

Review: "Smashed"

Ever since Ray Milland first showed us the sweaty shakes of a desperate drinker in "The Lost Weekend" nearly 70 years ago, alcoholism has been a favorite, recurring subject for Hollywood. "Smashed" doesn't really add anything innovative to the picture, but this indie drama is still an unnerving portrayal, buoyed by a terrific performance by Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Probably the biggest departure is that the drunks in "Smashed" are not suicidal or obviously self-destructive, a la "Leaving Las Vegas." Rather, they're functional alcoholics who manage to hold jobs and have relatively stable lives, while consuming astonishing quantities of booze.

To Kate (Winstead) and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul), drinking is a lifestyle choice, not an addiction. They were raised with boozing parents, drank socially all through their teens and early 20s, and have just kept the party going.

"Everyone I know drinks. A lot," Kate confides.

Director James Ponsoldt, who co-wrote the screenplay with Susan Burke, focuses on Kate, and it's through her eyes we glimpse her cherished sense of normalcy slowly crumbling. Charlie remains a secondary character, a good-hearted guy from a wealthy family who's never had to earn anything in his life. When Kate finally makes a vow to change her life for the better and swear off booze, Charlie isn't willing to make the same leap, forcing a heavy choice on her.

The story opens with Kate waking up hung over and running late for work. It turns out she's a first-grade schoolteacher, and a good one who brings genuine enthusiasm to the classroom. But her drinking catches up with her, and she vomits in front of her kids.

Worse yet, when one of the tykes asks if she's pregnant, she assents rather than tell the truth. Unfortunately, it gets back to her principal (Megan Mullally), and the small white lie blossoms into a parade of deceit.

Dave (Nick Offerman), a co-worker who's been sober for nine years, encourages her to go to AA meetings, and that's where things really move into a higher plane. Winstead's performance during her first talk is a mix of brutal honesty, fear and a touch of despair.

Here is a young, smart woman who's forcing herself to face up to the fact that the things she used to do for fun are increasingly becoming what is harming her. It's a revelatory scene, almost giddy in its honesty and authenticity.

Octavia Spencer has a strong, small turn as Kate's AA mentor, and Mary Kay Place shows up as her mother -- and a frightening glimpse into her own possible future.

At a crisp 81 minutes, the film leaves some areas underexplored, especially Kate's relationship with Charlie. But "Smashed" works as more of a harrowing character portrait than a full-throated narrative.

3 stars out of four

Review: "The Thing"

Let me confess right up front that "The Thing" has a high bar to hurdle for me -- I absolutely adore John Carpenter's spare, minimalist 1982 sci-fi thriller/horror film. So any remake has to square off with outsized expectations left over from my childhood.

Though "remake" isn't quite right. This new movie from Dutch director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. and screenwriter Eric Heisserer is set in the days leading up to the events in the '82 flick. You may remember it opened with a couple of Norwegians chasing a dog across the frozen Antarctica tundra in a helicopter, trying to kill it. They chase it into an American scientific outpost and are themselves slain in the ensuing melee.

Carpenter's movie was the real remake, of 1951's "The Thing from Another World." Both the '51 and '82 pictures were based on a novella about a shape-shifting alien by John W. Campbell Jr., though the latter of the two is more loyal to the book.

Got all that? So this new movie is a prequel of a quasi-remake of a film adapted from a novella.

Van Heijningen is a feature film rookie, and it shows. He seems to want to channel Carpenter's aesthetic -- even opening and closing his movie with a variation on Ennio Morricone's pulsing theme music -- but abandons it again and again for the convenience of the plot.

For example, one of the great things about the original (which is what I'll call the 1982 film for our purposes) was the sense of absolute and total isolation. Cut off from the rest of the world and unable to communicate, there was a sense of raised stakes -- no rescue is coming, because no one even knows what's going on.

Right away, the filmmakers undermine this by showing Sanders (Ulrich Thomsen), an unctuous scientist, recruiting young American hotshot Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) to come dig something mysterious out of the ice. It seems Sanders has been tipped off by his Norwegian colleagues about stumbling across a whole massive spaceship buried under a glacier.

If word had gotten out to the outside world, there's simply no way it would have remained a secret for long. At the very least, Kate or Sanders or his assistant Adam (Eric Christian Olsen) would've at least mentioned where they were going to somebody.

Another thing I liked about Carpenter's version is that we never really learn anything personal about the motley crew of (all) men, yet simply based on how they're played by the actors and how their characters react to the threat, they're completely distinctive.

Here, there's a huge cast that gets lost in the shuffle. The Norwegians quickly become a flaxen-haired blur. Fortunately, the creature soon starts thinning them down to a manageable level.

Speaking of the creature effects, they're pretty good and pretty gory, for those who are into that sort of thing. But they're not markedly better than Carpenter's flick, which is pretty astonishing considering the nearly three-decade technology gap. The filmmakers stick to physical special effects to a large degree, with some CG animation thrown in.

Joel Edgerton and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (best known as Mr. Eko from TV's "Lost") pop up as a pair of American pilots who could get up in the Euromess. (Funny that, casting an Aussie and a Brit as Yanks.)

The movie doesn't quite know what to do with them, and for a bit we think Edgerton is going to morph into the Kurt Russell role. But that more or less belongs to Kate, who's always a couple of steps ahead of the guys in figuring out the boogums needs to be exterminated, not experimented upon.

Maybe she learned everything she knows about the alien from the last movie.

2 stars out of four

Video review: "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"

 "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is one of those movies that divides people into groups: Those who loved it and those who couldn't care less about it (and probably never saw it).

Despite generally glowing reviews and a lot of excitement from its geekeratti target audience, "Scott Pilgrim" died at the box office. The saga of a Toronto dweeb who must fight the seven evil ex-boyfriends of his new lady love -- all done with video game-style super powers and an indie hard rock soundtrack -- must've seemed too far out for most ticket buyers.

I thought it was fun and fresh, and certainly one of the more visually inventive films of the year.

Michael Cera plays Scott, an impish slacker who meets Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the ultimate cool girl. Scott makes it his mission in life to become her boyfriend, which he accomplishes in short order.

Alas, Ramona has those seven nasty exes, who have sort of pact to destroy anyone who would replace them.

Director Edgar Wright, who co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Bacall based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley, uses each of the fights as natural chapters in the plot. The evil boyfriends are played by stars such as Jason Schwartzman, Brandon Routh and Chris Evans.

Ultimately, "Scott Pilgrim" may have been too cool for its own good.

If you're a fan of this movie, you're going to want to buy your own disc just for the extra features, which are among the best I've ever seen.

The extras are the same for single-disc DVD and Blu-ray editions. There are four separate feature-length commentary tracks, including one by Cera and the other principal actors. There's also a blooper reel, still photo gallery, and 27 minutes worth of deleted scenes -- including an alternate ending where he and Ramona don't end up together.

The Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is where things really get awesome.

On top of the stuff listed above, there's the standard goodies: A 50-minute making-of doc, a 16-minute feature on the various musical acts (including Beck) who wrote songs for the movie, and other featurettes on subjects like visual effects and sound design.

But they're just getting rolling.

A collection of pre-production video, including audition reels, animatics and rehearsal footage, runs 87 minutes all by itself. There are director's production blogs, music videos, and an Adult Swim cartoon based on Scott Pilgrim.

My favorite goody: "Scott Pilgrim vs. the Censors," a "TV safe" version of the film -- the joke being that it's only four minutes long.

Movie: 3 stars out of four
Extras: 4 stars

Review: "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World"

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" is like the entirety of American youth culture crammed into a single package: It's about love, alienation, video games, comic books, chord-grinding indie/punk rock, texting, dead-end jobs and evil ex-boyfriends.

Mostly, video games and ex-boyfriends.

Michael Cera, Generation Y's poster boy of angst-y charm, plays Scott Pilgrim, an itinerant bass player with a Toronto band called Sex Bob-omb.

Say it out loud and fast and the band's name, if not exactly making sense, at least becomes a cool, quirky statement. You could say the same about the movie.

Scott's mission: He must defeat the seven ex-boyfriends of Ramona Flowers, his new-new girlfriend. (As opposed to his old-new girlfriend, Knives Chau. In other words, she's his ex, but doesn't know it yet.)

Each of the battles is played out as an arcade-style brawl of superpowers, with the scrawny Scott able to leap and punch like the avatars of the video games he plays. Why he's suddenly able to summon these abilities for the fights with Ramona's exes, but is an everyday schmo otherwise, is a subject never broached.

Other people can also perform amazing feats when called upon, which makes a little more sense, in the sense that it doesn't. As near as I can figure, it's like everybody in the movie's universe can hit a button on their personal game controller and transform into a super-hero, while never leaving their alter-ego behind.

Other people in this world -- which is populated entirely by those under age 30 -- accept these battles as a matter of course and settle in to spectate, even though they tend to interrupt the concerts and dance clubs they were attending.

I enjoyed myself watching "Scott Pilgrim," at times immensely so. But I wonder if anyone who's not intimately tapped into its peculiar vibe, built largely around the Mario Bros. oeuvre, is going to embrace (or even understand) the film.

(For example, if right now you're thinking Mario Bros. refers to a pizza chain run by siblings, then this movie is not for you.)

Cera has become the unlikeliest movie star -- a movie star being different from a film actor in that while an actor plays many different roles, a star always plays himself. In Cera's case, he's a mumbling, self-doubting drink of water who finds his resolve when the girl of his dreams appears.

His pursuit of Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who favorably recalls a young Winona Ryder) is fumbling and pathetic, but inexplicably successful. Soon he and the pink-haired (for now) Ramona are an item, which is destined to put a damper on the bubbly mood of Knives (Ellen Wong).

The story -- the screenplay is by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright, who also directed, based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley -- is framed around the ex-boyfriend fights. Each one has its own loopy rules and energy, and pop-up messages appear just like in a video game to let us know when people have gained new abilities or earned an extra life (never hurts to have one of those).

The boyfriends tend to be played by recognizable actors like Chris Evans and Brandon Routh (both of whom also moonlight in other movies as super-heroes -- Captain America and Superman, respectively).

There's no real danger to the action, of course -- if you die in an arcade game, you can always drop in another quarter to continue. (I say "quarter" figuratively, since it's been awhile ... what do those things cost now, like a buck-fifty?)

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" doesn't really add up to much more than high score on a screen. But it achieves it with a fresh, brash style that demands, "Are you really cool enough to like this movie?"

3 stars out of four