Summer Movies 2013 part 1

Summer Movies - We are having our second good stretch of warm weather here in New England marking the start of summer. Of course we all know that the Summer movie releases start out in May, trying to get a jump on the competition, each hoping to be that next great blockbuster. So which one do you give your money to. How much does the trailer affect weather you see the film? Is the actress or the actor the reason you plop down your $12 (or so)? With so much hype with many of these films can they ever live up to the lofty expectation they themselves set so high? I generally avoid the summer glut of big budget high action films but I have to say this year I have already been dragged into several. Here are some thoughts on the ones I have seen.
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)- I really resisted this film after having long talks with friends about the difference between an actor playing a role and an actor playing a portrayal of another actor. Star Trek falls into this later category with several characters being beloved and expectations being high and the current actors mimicking the characters played by the other people in the original series. It a tricky game being played by the film makers here.You have some guys playing a role like Chris Pine as Kirk, or Zoe Saldana as Uhura you can't accuse them of mimicry because his playing of Kirk is so different from William Shatner that he can be said to be playing Kirk as he Chris Pine sees the character. On the other hand Spock and Bones played by Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban are merely acting the way they have seen Leonard Nemoy and DeForest Kelley did the roles in the past. Is it honest acting like an existing character? I found it bothered me more this time than in the first film where it was sort of novel. Also because this is the route they took the actors are stuck playing those roles that way if the franchise continues. Then there is Simon Pegg as Scotty who has been written into the films as comic relief. He is just a caricature of the Scotty character from the original series played by James Doohan. So with trepidation my daughter and I went in to see the latest installment. They are relaunching a universe with a rabid fan base so in some ways need to keep many of the Star Trek elements in place. While at the same time they are taking the storyline in a completely different direction. They want to use the history created by the original series while at the same time rewriting it. In the end I think they win because they are making money. This film is a giant action film and it is pulling in the money, as of  June 23rd $216,611,000 (USA). The story brings back a classic Star Trek character to play the bad guy but in doing so completely trashes the history of the television series. On one hand selling this film on the shoulders of the series but then saying we should ignore the history that took place on that series. So we have our bad guy. Then there are several real problems in the film. One is that it was incredibly predictable the trail of clues needed to make the film flow were too obvious and thus there really was no big turn in the film. The question posed by the film is when a person conducts an act of terror and destruction, one in which loved ones were lost, is it at that point acceptable to go find and kill the perpetrator of that crime? Of course that question was answered well before the final sequences of the film, really by the end of the second act. Then the third act ends up creating more problems for the future of the series instead of just solving the problems of the film. Primarily is the frozen people with the magical blood which saves Kirk but leave a whole lot of questions that I won't go into here. When the film was done and the lights went up in the theater, my daughter looks over to me and says "Well that sort of sucked." I am not going to say that myself, to an extent I was entertained. I was annoyed at times with the characters and the strange dialog where characters argue during the most life threatening times, and really pissed at the comic relief of the film. It really is one of my biggest pet peeves about action movies since the 80s, it seems every one of them feels the need to relieve tension with some sort of comedy bit. At least for me it just takes all the edge of your seat tension and throws it away, taking me out of the film. I hate that and wish it would stop. Star Trek: Into Darkness works as a Summer film but it certainly has its flaws.

This is the End (2013) - My family almost never agrees on a movie to see as a group, with my wife Elisa preferring uplifting films or heart felt romantic comedies. My daughter on the other hand likes more teen oriented fair with some action and horror on occasion. I usually stick to horror but love science Fiction and also see an action film when I am in the mood. So when we all bent a bit and agreed to see this silly comedy it was a rare event. The story centers around the relationship between Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel who were both on Freaks and Greeks together at the turn of the century. In fact several of the players were on that show including James Franco and Jason Segel but the story centers on the gap in the friendship between Rogen and Baruchel since Rogen became more famous and moved to Los Angeles. They all end up at a party at James Franco's house and comedy ensues. Then there is the whole fact that the world is ending and its the book of revelation end of the world. The supporting cast is excellent including Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, and Emma Watson the comedy is funny and rude. As with all comedy there are bits that hit and ones that miss. There really is no predicting, will the audience find the cumming all over the house argument funny? How about Michael Cera as coke head? What about the uncomfortable relationships between Jay and the "new " friends Rogen has? We all laughed at parts of this film and I think the consensus was that it was pretty funny most of the time. Taken for what it is, a funny relationship, end of the world movie with some commentary on the shallow nature of Hollywood relationships and how success changes existing friendships.

World War Z (2013) - I just saw this yesterday so of all the films here this is the one where my thoughts are most raw. This is a Brad Pitt vehicle all the way, most of the actors are far less known than him and the story focuses strictly on him and the red shirts that happen to be with him in each sequence. This is an end of the world scenario where a virus immediately infects people bitten by an infected person. We start the film with Gerry Lane (Pitt) and his family, wife Karin (Mireille Enos) and daughters Constance (Sterling Jerins) and Rachel (Abigail Hargrove) as they experience the outbreak in Philadelphia. The action pieces in the beginning of the film are worth the price of admission as the family first flees Philly and then is rescued at the last second from the roof of an apartment building in Newark NJ.  Gerry a field investigator for the UN is needed to try to figure out the origin of the virus that is quickly decimating the major cities of the world and beyond. The secondary story is that of Gerry not wanting to leave his family at the end of the world but also knowing the best way to keep them safe is to figure this thing out. So off he goes on a world wind tour of Korea, Israel, and Great Britain before finally having some resolution. Now each place has its action scenes with the Korean one making no sense to me, the Israel one pissing me off and the WHO facility in Great Britain being inevitable. My primary problem comes with the Korean one where they fly in looking for patient zero, the entire sequence takes place at night in the rain and even with the time constraints placed by the virus it seem really poor decision making to me to not wait until daylight to do their business. Instead they risk the entire operation and lose there primary virus doctor, Andrew Fassbach (Elyes Gabel) in an incredibly unintentially funny way. On top of that they introduce a decent character Capt Speke (James Badge Dale) give him a bit of personality, just to kill him off, bastards. 
  Gerry is the luckiest person on the planet, getting his family out of two major cities during the outbreak, Surviving the silly night time maneuver in Korea, surviving the crazy CGI filled swarming of Israel, living through an outbreak on a plane and then recovering from injuries when the planes crashed to make it to the WHO facility, then avoiding 80 zombies and figuring out how to fight back against the plague using himself as the Guinea pig. Over the course of the film he still finds time to check in with his family. What a guy! Now don't get me wrong this is not a bad movie director Marc Forster seems to know how to do action and it is pretty compelling throughout. He is a competent director with impressive credits including Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, The Kite Runner and Quantum of Solace. I will certainly give this film another viewing when it comes out on DVD.

Priest (2011) Action Horror Vampire

Priest (2011) - Based very loosely on a Korean comic book created by Hyung Min-woo, Priest is a straight up action film with little depth but lots of CGI and fighting. The introduction done with comic art and voice over tells the tale of a long war between humans and vampires. Unlike the classical vampire these creatures are more like the creatures in the movie Alien. They are hive creatures with a community centered around a queen with many drones, monstrous and vicious and eyeless. They are stronger and faster than humans and it is unclear how we really won the war against them. It is true humans had the advantage of the sun, and then there are the Priests. The church, a future or alternate version of the Roman Catholic Church, recruited and trained a crack group of Vampire fighters called Priests. (or Priestesses for females). They seem to have their own set of superhuman powers. We see them jumping from great heights, moving really fact and fighting exceptionally well. It is unclear to this writer why they had these powers but maybe I missed the line of voice over that explains it away. It is the case that if you are not paying very close attention during the early part of the film some things could be unclear to you. The film is talky at the beginning to get everyone in the rules of the world but after that it is event driven. The plot points explaining the world are underdeveloped and it is a bit irritating. Why did the Church put the aliens, oops Vampires on reservations instead of killing them? I really don't understand; is there some reason these monsters were spared? I know they have some sort of hierarchy are they more intelligent than shown in the film? Why would they then allow themselves to become captures of their food source? The church after the truce disbands the priests and they have outcast lives in society. Why would you do that when your protectors are the only ones successful against the monsters? They played up the idea that because of winning the war and camping all the remaining vamps that the threat was gone. Since the priests are the heroes the church leadership felt threatened by their success and thus disbanded them. Since they had contained the vamps there was no threat there anymore. This is awful thin and I questioned it while watching the film. Also if the people knew the priest were the ones who saved them then why would they shun the priests after the war. The film makes a point to say society was not a place the priest could fit in and so they took the lowest of jobs. Is this a metaphor for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan? Oops, forgot this is an action movie there is probably no metaphor at all in it. So some years go by and the church is in control of society, in a direct rip off of the film 1984 the imagery of the a society control by a central power, in this case the church. I kept feeling that the leaders of the church were a bit odd in there approach to the priests. Here they have this controlled society all doing there confessions and prayers. Sure the priest were maybe a threat as the saviors of the wars with the vampires but there is never any detail given to what actions they took to be a threat. Just a given that they somehow could upset the order of things. We as an audience though have to see the priests as a bigger threat than the vampires. Even after reports of vampire attacks come into the church they refuse to accept that the vampires are again a threat and thus refuse to gather up their priest forces. This struck this writer as ridiculous. If the greatest threat to the society was the vampire I would think that those in charge could recognized it. They after all just a couple years earlier came close to losing it all. How could they in the face of another vampire war not see that as the greater risk. I was expecting more meet to this conflict also. It was given really short thrift and never we never fully see the motivations of the different factions. This is often a problem with action movies, they are lean with just enough information to move to the next action sequence. Not that there is no complexity to the plot, it is just that everything is very bare. In the opening we see the Priest raiding a vampire hive and the culmination of the set piece is that our main character Priest (Paul Bettany) is holding the wrist of his fellow priest but can not hold on as the vamps drag him into the dark. A trope or a cliche? I lean on the side of the cliche and expect to see the pulled away priest again. Later when the farm family is attacked and the girl Lucy (Lily Collins) is taken alive by the vampires, and the father is mortally wounded, you can bet they have some connection to our main character. We learn that the man is Priest's brother and the girl his niece, so now it is a personal story as he goes to rescue Lucy. Joining Priest in tracking the vampires is the boyfriend Hicks (Cam Gigandet) a local sheriff. Since the church does not want Priest taking this action they counter his move by sending four other priest after the men to stop them. Again to me a weak point in the script, they can't reinstate Priest but can do it for the four to stop him. If reinstating priests is such a risky thing then why was it so easy when it suited them? Priestess (Maggie Q) comes out after the Priest but instead of hunting him comes to help. Again in a one line of dialog her whole story is told and we know she loves Priest. It continues to go this way in the film, a line or two to explain something and then another action sequence. I don't want to go too much into the story which seemed poor to me. The film did the thing I least like about action flicks, big explosions and then the character standing up after being in them and shaking off the effects. No one important is even harmed by the massive destruction. Sure they have wounds but nothing like they should have received. It is why I don't like many action movies.

So the film moves to the stage where we learn what is on the line and a secret about little captured Lucy. Then the turn of who the leader of the vampires is. When the final sequence finishes you will be so ready to leave the theater. Set up for a sequel one could only wish never takes place. No really, never.

Rating (4.5) 5.0 and above are recommended, in the Zombiegrrlz system I would Rent it!

Star Trek (2009) Sci-Fi / Action

Star Trek (2009) - Director J. J. Abrams creates an alternate timeline where Star Trek can live without all the baggage of the past while still respecting those past stories. After some origin stories for Kirk and Spock we get into the meat.

In this time travel tale we see an alternate version of how the crew comes together in Star Fleet. All ending up at the academy and then after a crisis calls the cadets to service early to the starship Enterprise. There was plenty of lore for Trekies and a compelling story of revenge to create a good action movie.

In this one I do not need to complain about the certain outcome because frankly I was too occupied with my geeking out about the crew to feel the inevitable success and tidy wrap up of the story. I was taken out a couple time by the silly comedy bits thrown in to break up what was a fairly tense story. First was Kirk getting on the Enterprise with the help of McCoy who injects him with a vaccine that will make him seem sick so McCoy can take him to sickbay. The Mickey Mouse hands and other symptoms were dumb. It happens just when the tension needs to be ramping up and cuts that in a negative way. There is also a sequence when Scotty is transported into a cooling tank and Kirk frantically tries to get him out as he travels the tubes holding his breath. It is played for comedy but I did not like the timing. Nero (Eric Bana ), a Romulan who in the future watched his planet destroyed by a supernova and blames Future Spock for not acting quickly enough to stop it. Both Future Spock and Nero are pull into the impossibly quick to develop Black hole that the Supernova becomes and are transported back in time instead of obliterated by the pressures of entering a black hole. Nero has a plan to destroy Vulcan to punish Spock by making sure he is in a position to watch but not stop it. The story was decent enough and the pacing was excellent a real tribute to Abrams. The cast was very capable and captured the essence of the original characters without over doing it.

Kirk (Chris Pine)- Right on as the younger more rebellious James T Kirk. I loved at the end when he nailed an imitation of the William Shatner Kirk entering the bridge.

Future Spock (Leonard Nemoy) - This is Spock, All Hail Spock!
Currant Spock (Zachary Quinto) - Played nicely with a bit more emotion which is appropriate in the Spock timeline and besides he is banging Uhura, that's bound to illicit some emotion.

Uhura (Zoe Saldana) - More outfront than in the series and well played. I liked that her confrontation of Spock about ship assignment she won with logic very appropriate.

Scotty (Simon Pegg) - Too tiny a role. Real shame.

Bones McCoy (Carl Urban) - The most right on portrayal that was living and breathing McCoy. It was just a joy to watch.

Checkov (Anton Yelchin) - eh, mostly just okay.
Sulu (John Cho) - Okay I guess, did you know Sulu fences?

Rating (8.2)