Video review: "Star Trek Into Darkness"

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.

Movie:

Extras:

Review: "Stark Trek Into Darkness"

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.

Review: "Men in Black III"

"Men in Black III" gets brownie points simply for not being "Men in Black II."

It's been 10 years since "MIIB," and while I've completely forgotten the plot of that movie, the bad taste it left in my mouth lingers. I remember thinking it was one of the laziest sequels I'd ever seen, simply taking the quirky original film and repackaging its key elements for a cynical, money-grubbing do-over.

Despite that, it made something like a half-billion dollars, so the question becomes: why did it take a decade to make another movie? The jaded, cynical critic in me can't help but take note that the careers of star Will Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld have not exactly been afire as of late.

Sonnenfeld's been stuck doing low-profile television since the disastrous "RV" six years ago, which also pretty much marked the end of Robin Williams as a leading man. Smith hasn't starred in anything since 2008, when he gave us the lackluster "Seven Pounds" and the lackluster-er "Hancock."

Even if "MiB III" exists simply to gobble up cash and rejuvenate some careers, it's a reasonably engaging bit of disposable entertainment. It's not nearly as funny as it ought to be, and I kept feeling like the characters were explaining the movie to me rather than letting it just happen. But there's plenty of slapsticky action, more enjoyably scary/goofy aliens, and a few unexpected poignant moments.

Agents J (Smith) and K (Jones) are back as footmen in the Men in Black, a super-secret agency serving to protect the many alien species that are secretly residing on Earth (and the humans from them). Their jobs and their relationship have grown stale, with J frustrated with K's inability to ever open up to him. "I'm getting too old for this. I can only imagine how you feel," J riffs after a particularly nasty dust-up in a Chinese noodle shop.

Unfortunately, a superbad dude named Boris the Animal -- "It's just Boris," he repeatedly insists, not that anyone pays any attention -- breaks out of Lunar Max, the alien prison on the moon. A creepy alien with camera lenses for eyes and a pet that lives inside his hand and spits deadly spikes, Boris (Jemaine Clement) swears vengeance on K, who blew his arm off back in 1969.

Boris goes back in time and alters the temporal reality so K no longer exists. Now it's up to J to travel back to the days of hippies and decent rock 'n' roll and put things right.

Josh Brolin plays the young K, expertly mimicking Jones' curt mannerisms and high-pitched Texas drawl. The '60s-era aliens are a trip, made up to resemble extra-terrestrials from movie and TV of that time.

I really enjoyed Michael Stuhlbarg as Griffin, the sole survivor of his alien race who can see across the dimension of time and envision all possible outcomes at once. He's a got a daffy lost-puppy vibe, sweet-natured but with a bit of bite.

There's also a clever bit where J and K encounter Andy Warhol, who turns out to be another Men in Black agent in deep undercover (Bill Hader) to infiltrate the counterculture. "I'm so out of ideas I'm painting soup cans and bananas!"

The run-up to the big showdown is a blur of chases and quips, culminating in a fight on the launch pad of the Apollo 11 rocket as it's getting set to shoot the moon. There's also something about an ArcNet protecting the earth from a Boglodite invasion, and a love flame for K (played by Alice Eve when young and Emma Thompson when not) and a half a dozen other untidy story threads that screenwriter Etan Cohen never bothers to knit together.

It's hard to say that "Men in Black III" is worth the wait, since I don't get the sense much of anyone was really waiting for it. But now that it's here, at least you won't feel like zapping yourself with one of the MiB forget-it-all gizmos after watching it.

2.5 stars out of four

Review: "The Raven"

Just a quick review; Nick is handling the main review over at The Film Yap, so make sure to swing over there to get the "official" take.

"The Raven" takes a bold and innovative concept and does a good, not great job of executing it onscreen. It's a fictitious account of poet Edgar Allan Poe's final days, mixing lots of plots and dark imagery from Poe's writing with an entirely modern-feeling whodunit involving a serial killer. The murderer is acting out killings from Poe's own stories, to taunt the writer into pursuing him.

Think "Seven" or "In the Line of Fire," with lots of poetry quotations.

The result is a Gothic thicket of black cloaks, pecking birds with blood on their beaks, R-rated gore and scowling men shouting at each other in Victorian lilt. It's all quite absurd, but certainly engaging, and features John Cusack in one of his best roles in years.

Cusack plays Poe as a mordant, bombastic man frustrated that his amazing talents -- he'll tell you how amazing they are -- have left him penniless and alone at the age of 40. He presents an aura of pure confidence to the rest of the world, but privately he laments "the dark and morbid melancholy that has followed me like a black dog all my life."

If you like that sort of dialogue, you'll get plenty more of it from the screenplay by Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare, which piles on the brooding mood with a frenetic plot of twists and turns. Plenty of them don't make much sense, but director James McTeigue ("V is for Vendetta") keeps things tripping along at such a brisk pace the audience won't have time to contemplate the film long enough to spot the holes.

Some other standout lines: His editor (Kevin McNally) says of Poe: "I believe God gave him a spark of genius and then extinguished it in misery." Poe quips that if he'd known his writing would have inspired such a terrible admirer, "I should have devoted more time to eroticism."

A fellow writer and literary adversary of Poe's who is captured by the killer and forced to face the swinging pendulum bellows, "I'm only a critic!!" And as things really get tense, Poe fumes of the killer, "Even his prose is barbaric!"

The mysterious killer abducts Poe's lady love, Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve), whose wealthy father (Brenda Gleeson) is none too happy about the attentions from the fantastically failed writer. The murderer leaves a wake of clues, and bodies, with the requirement that Poe write his version of the story as it's being created and publish it in the Baltimore newspaper where he works itinerantly.

"The Raven" is a semi-smart mashup, undeniably entertaining even as we realize that it is, at its core, entirely goofy.

3 stars