STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
Regardless of how you feel about director J.J. Abrams, his high-octane 2009 reboot of the STAR TREK franchise, or his “Mystery Box” (AKA “Keep everything a secret even if that means lying to your fanbase”) approach to making movies, there is no denying the man knows how to craft a cracking good summer blockbuster. No denying whatsoever. Drop all the lens flares and convenient plotting jokes you want but none of that sh*t matters when a film is entertaining.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS is an incredible piece of entertainment. It’s action-packed; it’s chock full of fun performances; it has a deliciously ruthless villain in the form of Kha –er, JOHN HARRISON (Benedict Cumberbatch); it’s twisty enough to keep you guessing but visually impressive enough to make up for the fact some of those twists don’t quite work. To give you an idea of how thoroughly entertaining INTO DARKNESS (I refuse to acronym it down to STID) is, it somehow manages to be a time travel movie despite not having any actual time travel in it.
How does a movie that semi-revolves around time travel not have any actual time travel in it? Well, for starters, remember in Abrams’ first TREK pic when Nero (Eric Bana) and his giant mining ship, The Narada, laid waste to the USS Kelvin, forty-seven Klingon warbirds, most of Starfleet, Vulcan, and a good portion of San Francisco bay? Those events, along with the appearance of a genetically enhanced human named Kha –er, JOHN HARRISON who has spent the past 300 years in cryosleep, have changed Starfleet. Those events caused an organization series creator Gene Roddenberry envisioned as a space-borne humanitarian and peacekeeping armada to turn into a war machine.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
IRON MAN 3
Superhero threequels are notoriously tricky to pull off. The third installment almost always makes enough bank to keep the franchise rolling …but when are they ever any GOOD? For every one good threequel (THE DARK KNIGHT RISES) there always seems to be four subpar ones just waiting to disappoint by cramming too many new faces (SPIDER-MAN 3), spin-off nonsense (BLADE: TRINITY), unnecessary comedy (SUPERMAN 3), outlandish day-glow set retcon (BATMAN FOREVER), or pointless character deaths (X-MEN: THE LAST STAND) into the mix.
To be honest, I fully expected IRON MAN 3 to be a subpar threequel.
Why? Well, for starters, IRON MAN 2. I like that flick but know full well it’s a bit of a hot mess. The characters no longer seemed to click (Tony was suicidal, Pepper actively hated him for most of the film, and Rhodey 2.0 up and steals an Iron Man suit mere moments after delivering a speech about how he just convinced the military out of storming in and STEALING THE IRON MAN SUITS!), the plot was jumbled (I’m still reeling from the fact that “Demon In A Bottle”, one of Iron Man’s most important storylines, was compressed into a seven minute action bit), and the villains never really got their sh*t together (Why exactly did Justin Hammer give full control of a motherf*cking robot army to a convicted sociopath like Ivan Vanko?). Oh and don’t even get me started on the fact IM2 is more a prequel to THE AVENGERS than a sequel to IRON MAN. I’m all for in jokes and references but IM2 went too far.
Another reason I fully expected IM3 to be subpar was because THE AVENGERS was so above par. Not only did that flick make like 1.5 BILLION dollars at the box office, it also successfully managed to combine four separate franchises into one new franchise while leaving room for future installments in the separate franchises. That’s unheard of! That’s crazy! That’s awesome! That’s something I totally wouldn’t want to be the follow-up to! Even if IM3 makes a billion dollars at the box office, it’ll be considered a financial disappointment. Think about for that a sec.
But the biggest reason I expected IM3 to be subpar was the marketing campaign. Every trailer, TV spot, and poster released thus far has been visually impressive but tonally worrisome. It’s all been disaster porn spliced with terrorist imagery (yes, I know the first IRON MAN mined similar territory but once was enough) and the INCEPTION “Brahhhhmmmm!” sound for good measure. If it wasn’t Tony’s Malibu mansion being razed or him bleeding out inside his suit, it was The Mandarin — a character whose big screen makeover has transformed him from a uncomfortable Fu Manchu clone into a uncomfortable Osama Bin Laden clone — teaching “lessons” to those who opposed him. My gut feeling was that the suits at Marvel Studios had deemed genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist Tony Stark too playful and given him a “grim and gritty” DARK KNIGHT makeover.
Thankfully, my gut feeling was wrong. The marketing was Marvel Studios playing “Bait And Switch”. It served only to get you into the theater so they could reveal as IRON MAN 3 a GREAT threequel. Color me surprised.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
SINISTER
From the director of THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (Scott Derrickson), one of the guys at Ain’t It Cool News (C. Robert Cargill AKA “Massawyrm”), and the producer of the PARANORMAL ACITIVITY series (Jason Blum) comes SINISTER, an original horror pic (shock!) that combines the “found footage”, J-horror, snuff film genres into one delightfully sinister package. Yeah, I dropped a title pun. Deal with it.
Ethan Hawke plays Ellison Oswalt, a true crime novelist who seeks inspiration for his latest opus by moving his wife (Juliet Rylance) and two children (Clare Foley, Michael Hall D’Addario) into a home whose previous occupants were brutally murdered. Ellison soon discovers a box of Super 8 tapes in the attic of his new house, and watches in horror as images of various families being murdered flicker before his eyes. The deeper Ellison investigates the disturbing case, the more he begins to fear he has stirred an ancient evil that won’t rest until it has claimed his entire family.
What really makes SINISTER one of the year’s best spookfests and not just some really f*cked up episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE is the expert way director Scott Derrickson handles the proceedings. A lesser director would’ve simply relied on cheap thrills and jump scares but not this guy. Derrickson (who damn near wasted all the goodwill earned from EMILY ROSE by helming the reboot of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL) goes for the slow burn, opting to dole out the chills in small effective doses and infuse every scene — whether it be the money shots of Ellison staring in slack-jawed terror awe (Is that a thing?) at family snuff films or something simple like him having an argument with his wife — with palpable dread. Very impressive.
Equally impressive is how easily Hawke takes a douchebag like Ellison (He drinks! He smokes! He rejects authority! He watches sick puppy snuff tapes when alone in his office! He ignores his wife and kids after moving them into a crime scene!) and transforms him into someone genuinely likable. Hawke has always been one of my favorite underrated actors (see EXPLORERS, WHITE FANG, BEFORE SUNRISE, TAPE, HAMLET, DAYBREAKERS) and I knew he’d bring the goods but this is very much a case of “the actor elevates the material”. A lesser actor wouldn’t have been able to make you care. Hawke does.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4
I absolutely love the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY films. Have since the first and likely will till the last. Any horror franchise that consistently and effectively scares the living daylights out of me is aces in my book.
This is, in my humble/pointless opinion, the new FRIDAY THE 13th: Fan-friendly scarefests made on the cheap that blatantly recycle the plots their predecessors, arrive around the same time each year, and deliver just enough chills and new plot info to keep audiences coming back for more.
Quick recap: The first PA, like the first F13, is a bonafide horror classic. It’s a scary-as-hell two-person affair (Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston) that deserves a permanent spot in your Halloween queue …if you’re capable of dealing with director Oren Peli’s preference for suspense over gore, the “found footage” genre (an acceptance that the characters will be carrying cameras with them for the entire runtime is mandatory for this genre to work), and single location (a non-descript split-level home buried deep in the suburbs). If you can’t deal with any of those elements then you can go ahead and clock out of this review now because PA4, along with parts 2 and 3, strictly adhere to that formula.
PA2 expanded the mythos a bit (the spirit haunting Katie and her sister Kristi has been around since they were children) and delivered a funky prequel/sequel narrative (the first 90 minutes are set BEFORE the events of PA, the last 8 are set AFTER) but faltered slightly due to unlikable characters (both Kristi and Daniel prove themselves to be grade A douchebags) and some gaping plot holes (Why doesn’t Ali just show Daniel the footage and why is she missing in the finale?).
The less said about PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: TOKYO NIGHT, the better. It was a Japanese spin-off released concurrently with PA2 that’s been more-or-less retconned out of the current continuity. TOKYO NIGHT is the FRIDAY THE 13th: A NEW BEGINNING of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITY series.
For PA3, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman created not only the best PA sequel (yes, I’m including PA4 in that remark) but one of the finest full-on horror prequels (pic takes place in 1998 and features kid versions of Katie and Kristi) ever made. It cleared up most if not all the lingering questions presented by the first two films (Toby the Not-So-Friendly Ghost!) and blew up the mythos in unexpectedly awesome ways (witches!). Even if this series isn’t your bag, I dare you not to watch the final act of PA3 and agree it is some seriously riveting scary sh*t.
Unfortunately, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 is a letdown. Joost, Schulman, and (MILD SPOILER ALERT!!!) and Featerston have returned and made a straight-up sequel to PA2 (PA3’s prequel angle could’ve easily further exploited since the tapes seen at the beginning included a few labeled “1992”) but it’s one that will make zero sense to newcomers and likely only appeal to hardcore fans.
Click on the pic to read my full review…
TAKEN 2
Director Olivier Megaton and writers Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen don’t know who you are. They don’t know want you want. If you are looking for a good sequel to the 2008 sleeper hit TAKEN, I can tell you they haven’t provided one. But what they have provided is a very particular set of clichés; clichés they’ve acquired over very long careers. Clichés that make them a nightmare for people who desire sequels that feature logical storytelling, coherent action sequences, and non-stereotypical villains. If you go see TAKEN 2 now, that’ll be the end of it. They will not look for you. They will not pursue you. But if you don’t, they will send Liam Neeson to look for you, he will find you, and he will kill you.
Okay …maybe I went too far with that last line. Neeson isn’t coming to kill you or me. It’d be cool if he was (let’s be honest, “Death by Neeson” would be an AWESOME way to go out) and you might want him to after witnessing this half-assed, pseudo-remake, cash-grab, totally unnecessary sequel but he’s not. The reality of things is Neeson probably wouldn’t be very upset if you didn’t see TAKEN 2. Dude recently admitted he thought the first one was straight-to-DVD material and that he needed convincing — I’m guessing a truck full of money driven by a Fox exec was involved — to do the sequel.
Megaton, Besson, Kamen, and the Fox/Europacorp bean counters, however, want you to see TAKEN 2. They want you to see it …then see it again …then suggest it to your friends …and then go see it with them. So deep is their desire for your hard-earned moviegoer dollar that they, in an effort to guarantee box office dominance, simply photocopied the TAKEN script (a legitimate sleeper hit that grossed 226mil worldwide off a budget of 25mil), tweaked a few plot points (Lenore’s new husband becomes Kim’s new boyfriend, evil Albanian kidnappers are now the families of evil Albanian kidnappers, the pointless “Kim wants to be a singer” wraparound morphs into “Kim wants a license”, Paris subs for Istanbul, and so forth), expanded Grace and Janssen’s characters (Kim gets some action, both figurative and literal, this time around; Lenore spends most of the film unconscious or in a state of going unconscious) and then affixed a “2” to the end of the title so you would know this is a sequel and not a full-on remake despite the fact it basically is one.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
PITCH PERFECT
Do you enjoy mash-ups? Remixes? How about remix mash-ups? Do you like those? Hope so because if you don’t then you’re not going to have any fun with Jason Moore’s PITCH PERFECT. Personal enjoyment of this film is entirely dependent on whether or not you can handle a Script-O-Matic 3000 reworking of BRING IT ON, STICK IT, and GLEE.
Me? I like mash-ups …but PITCH PERFECT is a bit of a mess. The soundtrack had me tapping my feet (only the stuff in the actual film, the official soundtrack is comprised of alternate takes and is nowhere near as good) but the formulaic plot, and dozens of clichés it was rocking, had me tapping my watch. The performances were decent (Dane Cook clone Skylar Austin, Brittany Snow, and Rebel Wilson are the standouts) but character development was virtually non-existent (every character gets exactly ONE LINE to explain their behavior). The direction was competent (director Moore certainly knows how to stage an energetic musical number) but unimpressive (I expect more from the guy who was in charge of the Broadway’s LES MISERABLES for nearly thirteen years). For every one thing that works, there is something that doesn’t.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET
For the next 31 days, the crew at Adamantium Bullet will be reviewing one horror flick a day leading up to Halloween. Every pick will be horrific, terrifying, chilling, pulse-pounding, flat-out awful, or all that and more. Endured in honor of the season. Expect spoilers. Welcome to Adamantium Bullet’s 31 DAYS OF HORROR PART 4: THE FINAL CHAPTER.
Today, I check out the recent Jennifer Lawrence thriller HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET. Click on the pic to read my review…
DREDD 3D
DREDD 3D is the best film adaptation of Judge Dredd fans are ever going to get. End of story. I don’t care how good any future sequels or reboots are because, cinematically, this is the best it is ever going to be for this character. Everything from this point forward is going to dig into origin, relationships, and character growth and that’s just going to f*ck the entire franchise up. That’s what bogged down and corrupted the 1995 Sylvester Stallone Dredd pic. That’s the stuff that basically damages ALL comic book movies.
What Dredd fans want, I assume, is simplicity. They want the big guy — who is basically a future cop version of Dirty Harry (who scored five films and never once had to explain why he was the way he was) for those unfamiliar with the character — cleaning up the streets of Mega City One by any means necessary. That’s it. They don’t want him discussing his feelings or lamenting about how he had to judge his own brother. And they certainly don’t want him getting all gushy and moon-eyed every time his partner Judge Cassandra Anderson enters a room. Dredd is the law, not some sensitive schmuck. That fluffy crap is for other, less badass, superheroes.
DREDD 3D is not fluffy. It opens with Dredd (Karl Urban) dropping some quick COBRA-style narration, a brief car chase to establishing how badass he is, a trip to the station to pick up new partner Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) who he’ll initially dislike but eventually grow to respect, and then the duo is immediately trapped inside a 200 story slum block by a vicious drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) who orders them dead. What follows is ninety minutes of non-stop action.
No silly subplots, bloated main storyline, or extraneous characters lets director Pete Travis (never would’ve guessed the guy who helmed VANTAGE POINT was capable of keeping things simple) and writer Alex Garland (writer of 28 DAYS LATER and SUNSHINE) keep things brutal, intense, and 100% true to the comics. The performances, while one note to those unfamiliar with the source material, are equally true and never degenerate into campy theatrics (an issue that kept the 1995 film adaptation from achieving greatness). Combine those elements with blistering hot action and a hard R rating and you’ve got yourself the cure for the common superhero blockbuster.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
LOOPER
A fanboy fever dream mash-up of the first two TERMINATOR movies, DONNIE DARKO, TIMECRIMES, PRIMER, and TWELVE MONKEYS, Rian Johnson’s LOOPER is a wonderfully dense bit of entertainment. You see the plot synopsis above? That’s just the first act. Virtually nothing from the remainder of the film, save for a couple of sweet money shots and the lovely Emily Blunt, has appeared in the trailers and marketing materials for this flick. Impressive.
Even more impressive is how deftly writer/director Johnson manages to mix elements from the film noir, romance, dystopian future, time travel, Cronenberg-ian body horror, smart sci-fi, telekinetic thriller, hardcore shoot ‘em up, character drama, and total mind f*ck genres into a wicked cool package that is arty while remaining mainstream. A package that also happens to include some brilliant character work from Joseph Gordon-Levitt (successfully managing, via prosthetic bits and vocal mimicry, to channel a young Bruce Willis) and Bruce Willis (his best work in years), a couple of impressive supporting turns from Jeff Daniels (who’s really been on a roll recently with this and THE NEWSROOM) and Blunt (who’s performance that initially feels one note but quickly reveals many layers), and a trio of scene-stealing cameos from Garret Dillahunt (interesting to see him eschewing “guy who rapes then murders then rapes people” typecasting), Piper Perabo (shame she didn’t hit bigger after COYOTE UGLY), and Paul Dano (I guarantee you won’t forget brief turn as a “looper” who fails to “close his loop”).
If there’s a problem to be had with LOOPER it would be that the less you know about it, the better. I went into it thinking I knew pretty much everything there was to know and found myself pleasantly surprised that I didn’t. That’s something that happens very rarely when it comes to me and movies and I’m sure as hell not going to be the guy who spoils things and robs some fanboy or fangirl from having the same experience that I did. The less you know, the better. Trust me.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
RESIDENT EVIL: RETRIBUTION 3D
RESIDENT EVIL: RETCON 3D …er, I mean, RECYCLE 3D …ah, I mean, RETRIBUTION 3D is less a film and more an endless loop of Milla Jovovich money shots. Yeah, I know that’s this franchise’s bread and butter and I really shouldn’t complain because very few ladies kick ass as impressively as Jovovich but at least the previous installments made an some attempt to tell a semi-cohesive story. This one does not.
Rather than crafting an actual true blue follow-up to the events of AFTERLIFE, writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson has instead opted to full-on reboot the franchise with a massive retcon of all previously existing plotlines (do your best not to laugh when Alice suddenly just regains her powers because the plot demands it) and characters (main baddie Wesker is now a good guy and fan favorite characters Chris Redfield, Claire Redfield, and K-Mart disappear with no explanation). To make matters even more confusing, Anderson then trots out a few familiar faces (Sienna Guillory, Oded Fehr, Michelle Rodriguez, Colin Salmon, Boris Kodjoe, and even The Red Queen clock in extended cameos) and scenarios (whole sequences and locations from the first film, APOCALYPSE, EXTINCTION, and AFTERLIFE are recycled) in some kind of strange effort to make this a 10th anniversary reunion “clip show” film. That’s right; RETRIBUTION is a franchise reboot that wants to remind you of the better times but also wants to simultaneously dismiss them. Ugh.
Even MORE confusing than everything listed above is that RETRIBUTION also appears to have been created simply to usher you from one installment to the next. In essence, the entire film is a ninety minute long pre-credits sequence. What little plot exists here is just a thread to string the recycled bits along and get you to the big twist at the end which really isn’t much of twist because the first teaser trailer for this flick actually spoiled it.
Click on the pic to check out my full review…
The Archives
3d avatar bruce willis captain america chris evans christopher nolan daniel radcliffe disney doctor who emma stone emma watson fox halloween harry potter Hump Day iron man 2 james cameron johnny depp kick-ass kristen stewart marvel megan fox michael bay nic cage paramount paranormal activity reboot remake robert downey jr robert rodriguez ryan reynolds sequel star wars sucker punch the avengers the dark knight rises thor trailer transformers tron: legacy Twilight universal warner warner bros wes craven
WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Recent Posts
- Review: STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
- Theatrical Review: IRON MAN 3
- Jamie Foxx Unleashes His Inner Nerd On The Set Of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2
- Go Big Or Go Extinct With This New Trailer For Guillermo Del Toro’s PACIFIC RIM
- [SPOILER ALERT!] Details About Coulson’s AGENTS OF SHIELD Resurrection Emerge
- Ryan Reynolds And Jeff Bridges Battle The Undead In First Trailer For R.I.P.D.
- New Line Delays VACATION Reboot
- Film Bites: Summit Unleashes New Trailer And Character Posters For RED 2
- Kate Upton Cast Alongside Cameron Diaz And Leslie Mann In THE OTHER WOMAN
- Tom Cruise And Armie Hammer Join Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.
- MTV Greenlights SCREAM TV Series, Wes Craven In Talks To Direct Pilot
- Check Out New Trailers For HATCHET 3, THE PURGE, NO ONE LIVES, YOU’RE NEXT
- Check Out The NSFW Alternate Ending To The Oscar-Winning Short “Paperman”
- Paramount Beams Nine New STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS Character Posters Online
- DAREDEVIL Is Officially Back With Marvel