It begins almost like an Indiana Jones movie- not just for the indigenous tribe touting blow-darts, but for the feeling of being thrust into the midst of another adventure, with our heroes in jeopardy in the show-stopping opening. At this point in the game we're well aware this is a new vision of Star Trek: it's bigger, louder, more adventure-oriented. It almost has to be in order to keep the franchise's pulse going in pop culture. I don't think audiences today could put up with the slow, dry nature of the original 1979 Star Trek film. Then again, I don't know if audiences at that time could, either. Star Trek can be a great and wonderful thing, but 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is not, and why derive from other works when it's perfectly good on its own? It's for this reason I can understand why certain more hardcore fans may take issue with this new version of Star Trek being more akin to the action/adventure of something like Star Wars, and miss the social commentary and philosophical aspects of the original television series, and long for quieter, calmer, more considerate moments...[more]...

Silver Linings Playbook is a very charming movie and I felt invested with the love story. It's a very unconventional one on its surface but at its core, it's a nice love story, you want the guy and the girl to get together, and OH MY GOD SPOILER ALERT, they do, and it's satisfying. The movie also deals with mental illness, but not the truly scary kind, but just enough so the characters are still likable and we still root for them. The main character had suffered from delusions, and acts out violently, but, you know, he's still Bradley Cooper, so we still like him. It's kind of bizarre that they'd set a rom-com like this against the backdrop of dealing with some very, very serious afflictions- and don't get me wrong, I think it's treated respectfully enough, and accurately to a point, but, jeez, the movie gets so bogged down to its make-it-or-break-it final act, and the -will-they-won't-they of the romantic leads, I swear, you forget for a second that they have serious mental problems. Either that's a major mistake of focus made by the plot, or maybe the point is that they forget, too...[more]...

Iron Man 3 may be the very first time the existence of the 2nd Unit became very apparent to me while watching a movie. Directors can't be everywhere at once so it's necessary that they have a talented team to shoot certain action scenes, or aerial shots, or exteriors, etc. to make sure the production goes smoothly and is completed on time. I think these guys were working over-time on Iron Man 3. The action scenes drag on suspiciously long, almost without focus. They're competently executed and do their job in providing the expected thrills, but it feels like there's something missing from them. I've criticized the previous Iron Man film for having a shortage of action scenes, but for all it failed to deliver, for all its brevity, its action at least had some ground to stand on, and had the proper emotional undercurrent. In Iron Man 3 they feel like appendages, and I suspect that Shane Black was happy to let the "action guys" do their work while he felt more comfortable with the scenes where Tony is out of the suit, which may account for the fact that he's in and out of his costume more frequently than Lady Gaga at a sold-out venue...[more]...

Life goes by pretty fast. Far too fast to spend your time watching bad movies, unless you can find some kind of pleasure in it, which is something I've experienced with the cheesy 1981 horror film The Evil Dead. Much to my surprise, the first movie I've went to see this year, now in its fifth month, was the remake of that movie, Evil Dead. Not that the multiplexes weren't offering up quality pictures in the last few weeks with films such as G.I. Joe: Retaliation, The Call, Olympus Has Fallen, and Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor. So why, of all movies released this year, would I finally make the trek out to my local theatre and finally land on Evil Dead? I don't know. I know Evil Dead. I like Evil Dead. I may as well see a movie called Evil Dead. I think that's what the brass refers to as "name brand recognition...[more]...

After World War One they called it Shell Shock...[more]...

It's a fine movie with impressive production value and excellent acting and singing and of course music, and I have to admit this is my first experience in any way shape or form with Les Miserables. With that in mind, I think it's most fair to judge it first and foremost from a filmmaking standpoint...[more]...

What the creative minds behind Disney animated films do well, especially in recent years with the revolution of CGI animation, is think the way children may think, and consider these secret worlds behind seemingly trivial things, like toys who come to life and interact with each other when you leave the room, or a thriving civilization of working class monsters with scream quotas hiding under your bed. Now with Wreck-It-Ralph, the world behind video games is discovered. It's an interconnected world of arcade machines, and the living, breathing video game characters who let loose after hours, the main character of this movie of course being Ralph, the resident bad guy of "Fix It Felix Jr.," who decides he's tired of being the bad guy over and over, and goes on a personal odyssey to find his worth...[more]...

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They say to write what you know. Most people would be happy to not know violence, though we live in a culture obsessed by it, it lives right next door to us, one nation under psychopaths. There was a time when it was not unusual that filmmakers could attest to knowing terrible violence first hand, whether they served in the military, or grew up in a neighborhood where crime and violence was an every day thing. It might be fair to say with the current state of movies, with our newer wave of filmmakers, who perhaps grew up on a steady diet of John Woo or Martin Scorsese movies, there is a certain detachment and desensitization to violence. With a wave arguably begun with Quentin Tarantino, everything now just has to be so clever, so referential, so meta, and oh-so-precious. And there's something about films directly related to the writing process that tend to be incredibly off-putting and masturbatory. I think Martin McDonagh gets away with it though, and I think we can forgive him if he casts Colin Farrell as himself...[more]...

Looper sees a bleak future (as if there is any other kind) where people are taken from the even FURTHER future, brought back through time travel, killed, and disposed of, since apparently in the gap of 25 years it has become really hard to hide dead bodies. So let's call that future "Future B." So in Future A it's no big deal to hide bodies and kill people and employees of the mob, or whatever the hell it is, are more than happy to take out these hits for cash with the knowledge that one day they may have to kill their future selves, thus closing their contract with absolutely no loose ends- but who cares about that, right? THAT'S SOOOO FAR AWAY. Also in Future A, and assumingly Future B as well, there are somewhat evolved human beings who have telekentic powers. Usually not good for much more than making a quarter float and impressing chicks at parties, save for an individual exception or two...[more]...

More than anything I think the death of Osama Bin Laden was a symbolic victory for the United States. The president made his announcement to the world, people celebrated in the streets, but the world kept on turning, evil still existed in the world, war continued, but it meant something. To kill the man responsible for the World Trade Center attacks meant something- to the families of victims, to the soldiers fighting in the Middle East, and to the government agents exhausted after a 10-year manhunt, when leads were getting so cold that to actually find him at that point would be as sure of a thing as a horseshoe toss...[more]...

What a rotten day Judge Dredd is having. It starts off with having to take down some gang-bangers who put innocent civilians' lives in danger, but hey, that's just part of the job. But then he's assigned to evaluate a rookie Judge with less than encouraging credentials and scores who also happens to be a mutant psychic for evaluation, and when they go off to what should have been a routine drug bust, it quickly escalates into locked down war zone in one of Mega City's many block complexes, with a powerful drug lord proclaiming a price on his head. When he finally gets some back up, wouldn't you know it, the judges sent in to help are actually corrupt and are more than happy to cooperate in his demise. In short, fucking everybody is trying to kill him. Does this phase Dredd in any way, or upset him, or cause him to question the system which he enforces so unflinchingly? I couldn't say for sure, which I think is the key to Karl Urban's performance as the character. He is a bad ass, he stands for the law, and he's damn good at his job...[more]...

Seth Macfarlane seems to be obsessed with nostalgia, and I guess it makes sense that he would do a movie like this as his first feature film. That's basically what it is about, a 35-year-old man-child who refuses to grow up. His job's decent enough, he's content to sit around all day smoking weed and watching old movies, he's in a long term relationship but doesn't feel the need to go that extra step into marriage- at least not yet. Oh yeah and he has living, breathing, talking teddy bear as a best friend/roommate that was brought to life through magic many years ago, became a celebrity, and now lives more or less in obscurity. You know. That old tired plot line. So it works not just from the whole man-child angle, with John refusing to get rid of his teddy bear (SYMBOLISM), but also as a buddy comedy, but in this case the wacky best friend who gets in the way of the happy couple happens to be a CGI stuffed animal...[more]...

Richard Gere plays Robert Miller, a calculating businessman, calm and reserved for the most part, seeing the bigger picture, keeping his cool. But there's a brilliant moment in the movie where he speaks candidly to his daughter while making a confession about a deal gone awry. Recalling the venture and its high point he almost loses himself in total ecstasy: "There's so much money coming out of this-- you can't believe it. You can't stop it...it is fucking minting money! It's a license to print money! For everybody! Forever! It is God!" He pauses to wipe his mouth...[more]...

There's always this feeling of hyper-awareness set upon us when viewing a Quentin Tarantino film, whether you're an aficionado or not, whether it's an entirely conscious feeling or not, but with the way his movies are presented, we're aware we are watching a movie. Django Unchained is not any kind of history lesson, it's not an account of events to be taken as entirely accurate in context within the time period, but it's history as seen through the eyes of movies, and interpreted by a filmmaker who has seen innumerable spaghetti westerns, blaxplotation films, and drive-in classics long forgotten...[more]...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a wonderful fantasy adventure and in more than worthy company of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and presented in a way that I guess only Peter Jackson was best suited to do. Tolkien's novel is a thin book by comparison, but "deceivingly so," as Jackson puts it. This is the first of three parts so excuse me while I bask in the embarrassment of riches. It works as an adaptation of The Hobbit, that much is true, but the masterful thing that Jackson has done is welcome the relation of the quest presented in The Hobbit with the epic saga of Lord of the Rings. It's a stand-alone adventure, but at the same time works as a prequel to Lord of the Rings, with the looming threat of things to come and it suggests that Bilbo Baggins' adventure is integral to Frodo's to follow...[more]...

I was a little surprised by Lincoln because it wasn't so much the sweeping biography that I was anticipating but very, very specifically about the crucial point in Abraham Lincoln's presidency with his struggle to pass a new amendment that would, among other things but most importantly, abolish slavery. There are no flashbacks to his childhood, no episodic examples of his uprising, just a self-contained period of time that really exemplifies this historical figure as a character, and how he acted under tremendous pressure, and how charming and decent of a man he must have been. There's no grand battle scenes, or montages of terrifying riots, it's very much a dialogue-driven film, showing how the pen is mightier than the sword, and how this man- a humble lawyer who came from modest beginnings, then became president, brought an end to the Civil War and ended slavery, using his words and knowledge of the legal process...[more]...

Oscar winner Charlize Theron and MTV Movie Award winner Kristen Stewart star along with the guy who plays Thor in an updated version of the classic Snow White tale. It's more frank and it's augmented to be more of a sweeping epic, which I don't really take much issue with because I think we all have a stubborn impulse built into ourselves to believe that all the Disney-fied versions of fairy tales are the most accurate representations, which is far from true, not that I'm a scholar on Snow White but if you were to tell me the original text had dwarves with names like Sleepy and Bashful then I'd be very surprised...[more]...

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There's a good deal of symbolism to take from Skyfall, of the story of this legendary secret agent meeting supposed death, finding his way back into the world, and having to build himself up over again to be the man he once was: no easy task, as the movie shows. This isn't just a reference to Skyfall being a follow-up to, and let's face it- a recovery from, Quantum of Solace, one of the lesser Bond films, but to the character as a whole. The end credits proudly remind us that Bond has endured on film for 50 years. He's been in many different forms, the movies have ranged from great to not-so-great, but when Craig's Bond stares his antagonist in the face and claims his hobby to be "resurrection," that can be taken without a hint of irony...[more]...