Transformers: Revenge of the Filler

I just finally watched the first Transformers on Monday, and it should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that it wasn’t really my cup of tea. I thought that it had its moments, but overall it was far too long, built almost entirely out of the most tired and shopworn cliches, and its attempts at humor were almost universally groan-worthy. Frankly, I was a bit bored by the whole thing, and I wasn’t terribly impressed by the final battle (during which I often had a difficult time telling the various giant robots apart as they threw each other into the scenery).

I initially watched the movie in case I should happen to want to go see the recently-released sequel to write a review. However, given my feelings about it, I have not yet decided when or if I will see it. Having experienced some difficulty sitting through Transformers on DVD in the comfort of my own home, where I could pause it anytime that I liked, I can’t really imagine braving the theater alone to be held hostage for another two-and-a-half hours of more of the same. And, really, who needs it when you have the far more entertaining spectacle of dozens of hilarious critical reviews of Michael Bay’s latest masterpiece? Jim Emerson, who rather amusingly refers to Revenge of the Fallen by the well-known internet acronym “ROTFL,” has noticed the reaction as well.

For my own part, I was so entertained that I thought it would be worthwhile to share a few of my favorites from the blurbs on Rotten Tomatoes, that you might perhaps understand how I might not be overeager to hit up the local cineplex this week. I have to wonder, when there is such a void of creativity as there seems to have been in this movie, do critics feel some kind of deep-seated need to fill it? Like some sort of simple defense mechanism designed to somehow redeem the experience? I don’t know, but that’s one possible explanation for what I’m seeing here.

First, a few eye-catching entries from several dozen negative reviews:

“It’s like being hit over the head repeatedly with a very expensive, very loud train set. After two and a half hours in this bludgeoning company, you’re begging Bay to put away the boys’ toys and make a rom-com.”
(Ed Potton, Times UK)

“The only part of Fallen more boring than when things are exploding is when things aren’t exploding.”
(Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly)

“If you ever wondered what a movie would look like geared toward the underdeveloped brain of a gestating zygote…then Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the insipid illustration you’ve been waiting for.”
(Bill Gibron, PopMatters)

“[L]ike the most totally awesome artifact ever of the end of the American empire… loud, obnoxious, sexist, racist, juvenile, unthinking, visceral, and violent… and in love with ourselves for it.”
(MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher)

Oddly, though, it was the positive reviews that caught my eye even more; not because they were so few, but because I couldn’t manage to wrap my brain around how someone could say any of these things about a movie and still recommend it to someone else:

“Good when it is good, but extremely, shockingly, horrifyingly bad when it is bad.”
(Willie Waffle, WaffleMovies.com)

“This is cinematic poetry for pinheads. It’s less of a film than a reason for a noise ordinance.”
(Kevin Williamson, Jam! Movies)

“While it would be hard to make a case for ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ as ‘good’ in any normal sense of the word, it possesses such brute force that the viewer is left with two options: surrender, or suffer in silence.”
(Tom Huddlestone, Time Out)

“It’s like watching a blender for two hours while someone shouts at you. And then the last half an hour is the same, except it’s more like having your head strapped to a washing machine while you watch a blender and someone shouts at you.”
(FHM, UK)

Seriously, what in the world? Ah, well. I’ll leave you with this lovely gem, which is the first paragraph of Ebert’s magnificent evisceration, and the recommendation that you go read the rest of it:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.

Oscar Best Picture Pool Doubled!

The Academy has rewound the clock in what may be the most significant Oscar rule change in recent memory. Ever since the 1945 ceremony, five nominees have been chosen each year as candidates for the top award. Beginning with the next ceremony, the Academy will be returning to the early years by selecting 10 nominees for the Best Picture category. This is pretty huge, actually, and it almost seems like an act of desperation as television audiences have continued to drop for the show’s annual broadcast. The change will almost guarantee that more popular films like The Dark Knight, or even WALL-E would have a strong shot at the nomination.

Overall, this seems like an overwhelmingly positive change to me, for a number of reasons. At worst, it isn’t likely to decrease the quality of the films chosen by the institution that awarded its highest honor to [insert favorite Oscar gaffe here]. It opens up the field to allow all sorts of films to be considered, even if they aren’t obvious Oscar-bait. That can only mean good things, both for the average, “populist” moviegoer and for the more picky folks (like me). Just imagine what the ballot might have looked like, even during the past 2 or 3 years, if the field had been opened up before.

I’m also interested to see what effect this will have on the sorts of films that actually get the award (although that may take several years to judge). Perhaps even more interesting will be the effect it will have on how and when awards-season films are marketed and released, and on the massive annual prediction game that consumes the weeks leading up to the nomination announcements and the ceremony itself. I have no speculations about this at all, and it’s really far too early to be talking about the Oscars. This news was just too massive to pass up.

Up

starring Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, and Jordan Nagai
written by Bob Peterson & directed by Pete Docter and Bob Peterson
Rated PG for some peril and action.
97%

Faced with being torn from his house to live out his days in a nursing home, geriatric widower and retired balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen (Asner) uses thousands of his helium-filled products to carry himself and his home out of reach. Once airborne, he sets sail for Paradise Falls, a magical lost world in Venezuela that Carl and his dead wife always dreamed of visiting one day. Just as he settles in, however, Carl is perturbed to discover an accidental stowaway: Russell, an 8-year old Wilderness Explorer who only needs to complete his “Assisting the Elderly” merit badge to make “Senior Wilderness Explorer.” Before Carl can set down to return the boy, the house is swept away in a storm, launching the two unlikely companions on a series of wild and increasingly implausible adventures.

Up takes the the phrase “flights of fancy” and makes it startlingly literal. Despite ostensibly being set in “the real world,” the movie pointedly and persistently ignores logic (but not storytelling logic) in favor of a sustained and terrifying balancing act of pure whimsy. The insanity begins with an elderly man who wants to relocate his entire house to a remote jungle on another continent using only a large number of ordinary balloons, but that truly is just a beginning. The audience will repeatedly be faced with a choice between whether to ask why in the world there is, say, a trio of talking dogs flying World War I biplanes or simply to roar with laughter at the imaginative absurdity of it. If you choose as I did, your sides may ache a bit by the time the film is over.

Up might have you laughing until you cry, but unless you have a heart of stone it is also likely to have you holding back tears of a different sort. The opening scenes of the movie, which follow the protagonist from childhood to old age with a marvellous economy, include what is among the most deeply-affecting five minutes I have ever encountered in cinema. I’m not sure there was a dry eye in house by the time it was done, and there was audible sniffling coming from all around the theater. You know the cliche about actors who think about their dogs dying in order to generate tears? I could think about this sequence in Up and cry right now. Pixar’s ability to evoke vast ranges of audience emotion, as well as communicate story and character personality, with just a few simple images is almost frightening.

As Pixar’s storytelling ability continues to mature, it has grown less sophisticated, not more. This is a deceptively simple story, in part because the writing and the animation are blended so flawlessly and efficiently together in service to one great vision. I would almost argue that Up is the first Pixar film that is not for kids at all. They will enjoy it, certainly, but thematically this is a movie written entirely for adults. Among other things, it is about mourning and loss and dreams deferred, all thinly disguised beneath a fun, noisy layer of 1930s adventure serial mayhem. The film’s destination is so subtly and skillfully woven into the fabric of the action that, when we reach Carl’s sudden epiphany in a lovely quiet moment just before the climax, I was caught emotionally off-guard by the beauty of its message.

Up is Pixar’s tenth feature-length film, and by now it is pointless and reductive to attempt to establish how much they have “outdone themselves” this time or to effectively rank the latest masterpiece in relation to the previous ones. Up is magnificent, but it is not my “new favorite” of Pixar’s films. It is not their most visually-impressive film to date, nor their most thrilling, nor even (astoundingly) their most imaginative. It may very well be, however, the most touching story they have yet told, and I have a strong feeling that it will be a sentimental favorite for many of the studio’s fans. Meanwhile, it is visually-impressive (and great fun as the first Pixar offering in 3D), it is thrilling, and it is imaginative, certainly more-so than the vast majority of films (animated or otherwise) that will be released this year. The latest Pixar release has been a highlight of my summer for the past few years, and this is no exception.

Film Roundup XXIII

The Truman Show – 94%

Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the unwitting star of the most successful, longest-running reality television show in history. Officially adopted by a studio when he was still in the womb, every second of his life since birth has been broadcast on live TV. His entire town and the area around it are part of a giant, carefully controlled set, and everyone he interacts with, from his parents, spouse, and best friend to his boss, co-workers, and the people he passes on the street, are actors. Everything that happens to Truman is scripted, except for what he does himself, but cracks are beginning to form that may just bring his entire world crashing down around him.

Like Groundhog Day, The Truman Show works magnificently on two levels: First, it is a light, intelligent comedy based on a thoroughly original premise. Second, it has a brilliantly communicated cinematic subtext. Released in 1998, it is an astoundingly prescient look at the phenomenon of reality television and our cultural fascination with making celebrities out of ordinary people. Much more than that it is about the relationship between art and life, and about a rebellion against the banality and artificiality of modern life. Truman, despite being the only character not aware that his entire world is merely a small and shallow copy of the real world, somehow senses this truth, and believes it in a way that none of the others even has the capacity to experience. This is a sharply-written film with a rewarding depth tucked underneath the charming exterior.

Mystic River – 93%

Three childhood friends, Jimmy (Sean Penn), Sean (Kevin Bacon), and Dave (Tim Robbins), from a rough Boston neighborhood are reunited under extremely strained circumstances when Jimmy’s daughter is murdered, Sean is the detective assigned to the case, and Dave is a suspect. Clint Eastwood directs this slow-burn drama, which I remember being terribly impressed by (but not particularly enthralled with) when I first saw it several years ago. The film navigates similar territory with Ben Affleck’s superior directorial debut Gone Baby Gone, which made a much stronger impression on me. Mystic River features three really amazing actors in three powerful roles, but at times they almost seem to exist in separate movies from each other, and the whole thing lacks a really human element that the audience can connect with and hold onto. Ultimately, the whole thing seemed incredibly well-made but also torpid and dreary, however I feel at this distance that it merits revisiting before I can trust myself to deliver an opinion that might carry any meaningful weight.

The Philadelphia Story – 89%

Wealthy heiress Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) is about marry for the second time when her ex-husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant) shows up on her doorstep with tabloid reporter Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart), determined to spoil it. Complications arise when Tracy begins to have feelings for Dexter once more, and is attracted to Mike as well. This smart, delightful 1940 classic has all the ingredients of a great screwball comedy, starting with that dream cast and a hilariously witty screenplay based on the hit Broadway stage version. In my opinion, it still doesn’t quite measure up to the likes of Bringing Up Baby and The Palm Beach Story. This is another film that I need a memory refresher on, but if you’re a fan of the genre, I’ve already told you more than you need to know.

What the #$*! Do We Know!? – 15%

This “documentary” combines dramatizations and interviews with quantum physicists and New-Age gurus to elaborate on what is quite possibly the stupidest jumble mess of a worldview I have ever encountered. It is part pseudo-scientific ramble, part quasi-mystical boondoggle, and by turns mind-numbingly boring and hysterically laughable. I was suckered into watching this load of utter dreck thanks to a few intriguing images accompanying vaguely-worded reviews in publications that ought to know better. It starts off promisingly enough, with dazzling special effects and the ponderings of a few scientists waxing philosophical about how little we really know about our universe. Then J. Z. Knight, founder of Ramtha’s School of Enlightenment, shows up. This woman claims to channel the spirit of Ramtha, a 35,000-year old Lemurian general who taught her the secrets of the universe which she now passes on to anyone crazy enough to listen. The film was actually made by a few of her students. The central premise of the thing is basically that humans are able to mentally alter their environment at the quantum level if they just learn to tap into the subconscious power we all possess. This manipulation can take the form of, say, influencing water molecules with your mind or lowering crime rates via meditation. There are some slick production values behind all of this, to be sure, but the argument it presents is never even remotely convincing and it all grows excruciatingly tiresome long before it finally, mercifully ends.

Murder by Decree – 78%

Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and his faithful biographer Dr. Watson (James Mason) are called upon to investigate the brutal murders committed by Jack the Ripper, and uncover a monstrous, far-reaching conspiracy. Everything about this movie feels as though it ought to be better than it actually is, and that more than anything is probably why it fails; simply because it fails utterly to live up to its enormous promise. Plummer and Mason are perfectly cast as the world’s greatest detective duo, and they are right at home in this investigation of the Ripper murders. In fact, Conan Doyle himself looked into the case at the time, although he never involved his most famous creation. Furthermore, Murder by Decree is frightening and suspenseful in many places (as it ought to be) and seamlessly integrates an actual theory about the identity of the killer long cherished by conspiracy-minded amateur sleuths.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t quite gel, through no fault of the performers (with the exception of Donald Sutherland’s cornball psychic). The look is all wrong. The lighting throughout is garish and awful, and it is diffused softly across everything as though someone had rubbed Vaseline on the lens. The director consistently fails to create an ambiance that evokes the proper mood, which results in a mood of annoyance more often than not. Worst of all from a fan’s perspective, the story sticks just close enough to the historical facts of the case to tie Holmes’s hands as a detective, and he is never really free to be true to the ingenuity of the original character, which in some ways is worse than never having brought him into at all.

1More Film Blog: The Bitter Tea of Mister Capra

1More Film Blog joins the sidebar list of sites that I visit regularly. It’s the new movie-blogging home of FFCC member Ken Morefield, and there’s already some great stuff over there. I particularly appreciate the attention to a wide variety of classic films, such as the essay I wanted to draw attention to here. In “The Bitter Tea of Mister Capra,” Morefield engages in a lengthy analysis of the apparent anomaly of The Bitter Tea of General Yen as an example of the recurring themes that make Frank Capra’s films tick. I’ve certainly been guilty of regarding Capra as an unabashed sentimentalist (although I do enjoy the occasional screening of It’s a Wonderful Life), but Morefield’s assessment is eloquent and compelling. With these ideas in mind, I look forward to rewatching a few Capra classics, and maybe tracking down a few more (I’ve never seen Bitter Tea all the way through, for instance). In any case, definitely check it out:

[...] in Jamieson’s case the seed of truth is that Frank Capra’s films, for all his wholesome reputation, have some pretty dark strains to them. At the primary film discussion board where I hang out (when I’m not writing brilliant and erudite essays for 1More Film Blog), I managed to somewhat embarrass myself after watching The Bitter Tea of General Yen by remarking that John Ford movies have a way of starting conventional and yet unraveling in unexpected ways. After having my mistake pointed out–the film had been unavailable for so long I had forgotten why I had put it on my queue–I wondered openly why I had gotten into my head that it was a John Ford production. “Perhaps,” a sympathetic colleague opined, “because it doesn’t feel anything remotely like a Frank Capra movie…?”

I love that answer because it gets me and my pop-up (that’s the polar opposite of encyclopedic, right?) film history knowledge off the hook. It kind of leaves me wondering, though…what does a Frank Capra movie feel like, anyway? Capra was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director six times. He won the statuette for You Can’t Take it With You, Mister Deeds Goes to Town, and It Happened One Night, and those aren’t even the pictures he is most revered for. He also received nods for It’s a Wonderful Life, Mister Smith Goes to Washington, and Lady for a Day. Everyone loves Capra, but ask a cinephile for a list of the great auteurs in film history and…well, it’s not that Capra’s name doesn’t come up, exactly. It’s just that everyone tends to think of him as a director of great (or at least beloved) movies rather than just a great director.

[...]I guess for Capra my reductive hook is that a lot of his films seem to me to be about challenges to idealism. People in Capra films–and I’m including the Why We Fight series in this assertion–have high ideals, and if we know anything in a Capra film, it is that if you talk the talk you better be ready to walk the plank, because as Job is my witness, the world will put you to the test. For that reason, I somewhat agree with Jamieson when he says It’s a Wonderful Life is “terrifying” and about “being trapped.” I disagree that it is about compromising. One thing that’s so appealing about Capra films is that his idealists do put their ideals to the test. George does open the bank. Mister Smith does go to Washington. Megan Davis does put herself on the hook for Mah-Li’s loyalty. Sometimes they suffer greatly because those ideals lead them to trust in and sacrifice for the good of others, but even when that happens one feels as though the idealist is better off having had the ideals even if the people they love have failed to live up to them.

“Maybe Dixie’s Not the Right Song”: The South as Colonial Subject in Civil Rights Movies

In a 1941 essay, Carson McCullers suggests that “The South has always been a section apart from the rest of the United States, having interests and a personality distinctly its own. Economically and in other ways it has been used as a sort of colony to the rest of the nation.” Although her choice of words here is interesting, the idea itself is not totally unique among scholars and observers of the South.

In 1968, historian C. Vann Woodward famously expressed the central irony of southern history as its experience of military defeat and occupation amidst the American legend of victory and unbroken success, an experience that has cut the South off culturally from the rest of the country. Even more recently, in her 1997 book Gothic America, Teresa Goddu states that “the American South serves as the nation’s ‘other,’ becoming the repository for everything from which the nation wants to disassociate itself.”

What these descriptions, and many others like them, imply is a perception of the South as a region that is unlike the rest of the nation in ways that somehow reach deeper than mere differences in geography and culture. They point us towards a prominently-held vision of the South as a source of vices and traditions which contradict the image of a nation shaped by ideals of democracy and liberal humanism.

The decades-old trope of a South that is backwards and benighted has left the region culturally vulnerable to a sort of colonization by more enlightened Americans from northern (or western) states. This movement ostensibly seeks to bring the South, as a repository of undesirable elements, into step with the rest of the nation by encouraging white southerners to reject and deplore those distinctive aspects of their culture and heritage (i.e. those which evoke images of slavery or racial segregation) that contradict the values they share with their white northern brethren.

Ironically, but not surprisingly, the manifestations of such efforts are often implicitly complicit in the very same privileging of white over black that they appear to abhor, in addition to being guilty of many of the faulty attitudes frequently identified in Western colonial literature. The culturally-embedded existence of this phenomenon can best be illustrated via examples from the medium of Hollywood film, where widely-held notions of historical truth and national identity, correct or not, so often enter the popular imagination. Specifically, I propose to examine the 1988 film Mississippi Burning and the 1996 docudrama Ghosts of Mississippi. These are films which claim to retell actual events from the “beginning” and “end” of the Civil Rights story, and whose releases bookend a brief period of heightened cinematic interest in such stories.

Before proceeding with this analysis, however, it is worth stressing that the basis of my reading, including any criticism of these filmic portrayals of the Civil Rights Movement, is not intended as a critique of the actual Civil Rights Movement, or of the moral imperative which I believe lies behind the cultural and political forces that seek to oppose racism in all its forms. Nor is it my intention to paint white southerners as sympathetic victims of northern cultural “aggression,” or to pass a value judgment on any given aspect of southern culture (which is certainly not an endangered species by any reckoning) as worthy of either approbation or reprobation.

Rather, I am seeking to draw attention to ways in which the principles of postcolonial criticism can be adapted to shed an interesting and profitable light on a group of texts which have perhaps not been examined in this context before. My approach is based on the idea that postcolonial criticism ought to (at least in theory) be applicable to any group of texts which appears to assert the superiority of one culture and its values over another.

The Unmentionables

The end of my spring semester was so hectic this year that I quite forgot about transitioning into summer and reflecting back on my best experiences of the past few months until the time was upon me (well, a little more than that even, if we’re being honest). Then, as I assembled a list of my favorite viewing experiences of the year so far, I noticed something rather odd: I’ve hardly said a word about any of them here at Moviegoings. I mean, it was a busy semester, but come on. Well, that is precisely the sort of oversight that this post is designed to rectify. So for starters, and in no particular order, here are my top ten favorite movies of the spring:

This Is Spinal Tap

Coraline

Synecdoche, New York

Shotgun Stories

Smile

Radio Days

Frozen River

Frost/Nixon

Crimes and Misdemeanors

The Third Man

With the exception of Coraline, which I reviewed upon its release, and The Third Man, which was one of the films I covered in my recent essay on evil in noir, I’ve hardly said a word about any of these films. I was thoroughly pleased at the chance to revisit The Third Man and discover an immense appreciation for it. I “saw” it once before several years ago at the end of a long day, and I’m certain that I was asleep during long portions of it. It is a flawless film, both in style and in substance, that I expect to come back to again and again. Joseph Cotten (one of my favorite actors) and Orson Welles deliver amazing performances, and director Reed makes glorious use of light and shadow amid the amazing backdrop of war-torn Vienna. The result, to my mind, rivals the often-praised Citizen Kane in technique.

On the lighter side, I finally got around to seeing This Is Spinal Tap, oddly the only Christopher Guest mockumentary I had never experienced. It’s take on the lives of a fading rock band had me rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically. Seriously, not a good movie to watch if anyone in the house is trying to sleep. I was also vastly amused and entertained by the 1975 satire on beauty pageants Smile, featuring (among others) Bruce Dern, Barbara Feldon, and a very young Melanie Griffith. I highly recommend, particularly to anyone that has enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine or Drop Dead Gorgeous.

Far less comedic (though it has its moments) is Charlie Kaufman’s amazing directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, which features a great cast and a mind-bending story conceit. Leave it to Kaufman to venture into uncharted cinematic territory in order to deliver his own brand of thought-provoking ruminations on the meaning of life. The film was shockingly ignored at Oscar time, and I can only presume from this omission and from the nature of the big winner of the night that this was not a year to be challenging or original.

Meanwhile, this marks the year where I finally “discovered” Woody Allen. I had seen a few of his lesser offerings at one time or another, but I couldn’t really get into most of them. And, after all, the guy has been cranking out roughly a film a year for the past four decades. It takes a little effort to even begin scratching the surface. I still have a lot to see, but I’m already having a great time with the little that I’ve experienced. My two favorites so far have been Radio Days and Crimes and Misdemeanors, a comedy and a drama, respectively. Radio Days is nostalgia-inducing hymn to the glories of America before television, and as a longtime fan of all sorts of old radio programs, I loved it. Even better, though, was Crimes and Misdemeanors, which asks a lot of questions about doing good and doing evil, some easy, some far less easy, and challenges the audience to come up with their own answers.

On the independent front I was also challenged and moved by Shotgun Stories and Frozen River. The former offers a grim examination of the cyclical nature of violence as it tracks the escalation of a feud between two sets of half-brothers after the death of the father they all share. The latter tells a harrowing story about poor Americans struggling to get by on the margins of society as it follows a desperate mother who turns to the dangerous but lucrative practice of ferrying illegal immigrants across the border from Canada in order to provide for herself and her two sons.

Last, but not least, there is my favorite of the Oscar best picture nominees this year (which never had the ghost of a prayer to win): Frost/Nixon. Who knew that a film based on a stage play based on a series of decades-old television interviews could be so thrilling and compelling? I am told that the story’s central conceit (that Frost wrenched an admission of guilt out of a recalcitrant Nixon in the final session) is based on, at best, a misconception. That’s good to know, but I wasn’t expecting much in the way of literal historical fidelity anyway. I still feel that the film manages to capture the essential spirit of the time (both that time and this one, in a way), and I felt that on the whole it was very well done. I’m anxious to see it again.

Honorable Mentions:

Star Trek

starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, and Eric Bana
written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman & directed by J.J. Abrams
Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action and violence, and brief sexual content.
90%

Young James T. Kirk (Pine) is a restless troublemaker in a small Iowa farming community in the 23rd century. Challenged to follow his dead father’s heroic example, he enlists in Starfleet where his penchant for bending the rules soon has him locking horns with a young Spock (Quinto), and facing expulsion. Before that can happen, however, a distress call from the planet Vulcan sends everyone scrambling for their ships, and the disgraced Kirk is wrangled aboard the USS Enterprise by his friend Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban). As they race to the rescue, Kirk realizes that the fleet is heading into a trap involving the same giant, highly-advanced alien vessel that destroyed his father’s ship decades earlier. The enemy is under the command of Nero (Bana), a deranged Romulan who has come from the distant future to exact a terrible revenge by changing the course of history. It will be up to Kirk, Spock, and rest of the not-yet-famous crew of the Enterprise to step up and stop Nero from erasing their future, along with the future of the entire Federation.

I should say right off that, while I’ve seen all of the previous Star Trek films, I’ve never really watched any of the various TV shows associated with the franchise, and I’m certainly not what you would call a “Trekkie.” I enjoy the characters of Star Trek and the universe that they inhabit, but I’ve always been more of a Star Wars fan. Imagine my surprise, then, upon discovering that this story “reboot” of the original crew shares more than a few superficial similarities with George Lucas’s space epic, and in a good way. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Star Trek has reinvented itself by becoming Star Wars, but the new film is visceral and invigorating in a way that I have not generally associated with previous installments.

Naturally the first concern of any fan, casual or otherwise, will be the fate of one of the most beloved sets of characters in American popular culture. Happily, the casting, development, and portrayal of Kirk, Spock, Bones, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov are the film’s greatest strengths. The movie spends a lot of time laying the groundwork, and the result is funny, exciting, and highly enjoyable. These are the same characters we know and love . . . but different. Pine and Quinto to an excellent job, though I thought it was a bit unfair for Quinto to have to play Spock opposite the legendary Leonard Nimoy as the older version of the character (he must inevitably suffer by comparison, through no real fault of his own). Meanwhile, although Kirk and Spock are the center of things, everyone is given some chance to shine. I was particularly charmed by Urban’s take on Dr. McCoy and Simon Pegg’s charming and affable Scotty.

The writers are swimming in dangerous waters in allowing time travel to once again play such an integral role in the plot. If the story just doesn’t work for you because of various inconsistencies or implausibilities, the time travel element will most likely be the culprit, and I suspect that this is the sort of flaw that will only grow more pronounced in its silliness with subsequent viewings. For me, the experience was too fast-paced and fun to be picked apart while I was watching it, and that’s got to count as a success. The one notable exception to this (and I’m certainly not the first person to point this out) is a very clumsy bit of exposition shoehorned in about halfway through, in which the older Spock literally downloads “the story so far” into Kirk’s mind. I couldn’t help but think that any piece of plot that couldn’t be communicated more effectively than that probably shouldn’t be included at all. Still, it’s such a pleasure to see Nimoy back in action, you might not even notice.

For all of its creative re-imagination and entertainment value, I rather doubt that Star Trek will hold up terribly well against the passage of time. Of course, predictions like this are often wrong and tend to be pointless anyway (all that really matters is that the movie is worth going to see now, at the time of its release). I am led to make this rash statement because of the overall feeling that I was left with at the end: a strong nostalgia for past episodes and excited anticipation of future installments. The movie inspired me to want to go back and watch the movies featuring the original crew, and maybe even dabble a bit in episodes of the original show. At the same time, the film succeeded in reintroducing these characters and setting them up in a situation that I genuinely look forward to seeing developed in the various sequels which are no doubt forthcoming. This strong link with the past and potential for the future are all to the good, but they mark this Star Trek film as a very effective, but probably forgettable, transitional film. I just hope that the new Star Trek lives up to the promise on display here of better things to come.

Summer Movielogue, 2009

May 8 – ?

# Title (Production Year) Rating% Date Watched — Review links, if any (*Title* denotes top ten movie of period)

1215 Star Trek (2009) 90% 5/8/2009 — Post
1216 The Verdict (1982) 92% 5/10/2009
1217 The Little Foxes (1941) 93% 5/11/2009
1218 Sleeper (1973) 67% 5/12/2009
1219 Bananas (1971) 79% 5/13/2009
1220 Day of the Dead (2008) 54% 5/13/2009
1221 Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) 74% 5/14/2009
1222 The Station Agent (2003) 94% 5/15/2009
1223 Celebrity (1998) 89% 5/16/2009
1224 FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992) 10% 5/16/2009
1225 The Terminator (1984) 90% 5/17/2009
1226 One, Two, Three (1961) 94% 5/18/2009
1227 UHF (1989) 35% 5/19/2009
1228 Fanboys (2008) 77% 5/19/2009
1229 Wise Blood (1979) 96% 5/19/2009
1230 Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) 63% 5/20/2009
1231 Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) 95% 5/21/2009
1232 The Conversation (1974) 97% 5/22/2009
1233 The Lathe of Heaven (1980) 67% 5/23/2009
1234 The Water Horse (2007) 77% 5/23/2009
1235 The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) 98% 5/24/2009
1236 Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914) 53% 5/25/2009
1237 Planet of the Apes (1968) 94% 5/26/2009
1238 Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) 60% 5/26/2009
1239 Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) 80% 5/27/2009
1240 Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) 64% 5/27/2009
1241 Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) 62% 5/28/2009
1242 Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998) 74% 5/28/2009
1243 Planet of the Apes (2001) 68% 5/28/2009
1244 Up (2009) 97% 5/29/2009 — Post
1245 Crossfire (1947) 89% 5/31/2009
1246 The Virgin Spring (1960) 100% 5/31/2009
1247 Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) 84% 6/1/2009
1248 Barry Lyndon (1975) 97% 6/1/2009
1248 Who Am I This Time? (1982) 81% 6/2/2009
1248 Bonnie and Clyde (1967) 98% 6/2/2009

Filmwell: To Thumb or Not to Thumb?

I’ve been meaning to call attention to a new link on the sidebar for a few weeks now, and this is a good opportunity to do so. Check out Filmwell, a new collaborative film site featuring contributions from many of the people whose sites I already have linked. The first thing you’ll note is that their subtitle is a question: “Is this a film blog?” As near as I can tell, the short answer is “sort of.” But the answer is not important. What is important is that you will find all sorts of great essays on a variety of fascinating subjects posted regularly, as well as reviews of movies that are well off the beaten track. They have a lot of great stuff already, including the essay that I’m linking to here: A three-star rant about thumbs.

Jeffrey Overstreet rather eloquently questions the usefulness, and even the advisability, of film critics submitting to the universal practice of summing up a film by “grading” it on any sort of limited scale at the head of a review. I think he makes a fantastic case here, but I also think he might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater a bit. I have certainly seen Roger Ebert question and deride his very limited 4-star rating system, and the “thumbs up/thumbs down” model is even worse. However, within certain contexts I think that trying to communicate how well you liked a film within some sort of system is worthwhile. I definitely find the numbers generated by sites like “Rotten Tomatoes” useful as a consensus opinion of “experts” which only rarely leads me astray.

I also like the idea of “grading” movies, which is one of the reasons I have a 100-point scale to work with. I rate movies based on a few different things, assigning up to 50 points based on my opinion of the film’s quality and success at achieving what it sets out to achieve, and 50 points based on how much I enjoyed or appreciated it personally. When I come up with the resulting percentage, I generally find that the range it falls in (D+, B-, A, etc.) tends to fit my opinion of the film’s quality and enjoyability reasonably well. Nevertheless, there are definitely shortcomings to this system. For instance, my ratings are ultimately most useful to me and to people who share my tastes. And, as Jeffrey rightly points out, slapping a number on something at the outset is kind of an invitation to the reader to take that as your opinion and move on to something else. Why read the review when I know what you think already?

In any case, this post continues to challenge me, as other such pieces have in the past, to constantly be looking for eloquent, informative ways to express in prose what I think and feel about a movie and why. It’s a reminder that I can always use, and if more people would try to think past the “loved it/hated it” approach to film, I’m sure our appreciation of (and dialogue about) the movies would be enriched immeasurably:

Many thanks to the film critics who have drawn me in with thoughtful analysis, with imaginative prose, and with insight that shows they really took the time to think things through. Roger Ebert, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Steven Greydanus, Doug Cummings, Ron Reed, Michael Sicinski, Matt Zoller Seitz, to name just a few, not to mention the contributors here at Filmwell. I’ve learned as much from movie reviewers as I have from filmmakers. I’ve learned about paying attention, about plot and character development and color and commerce. I’ve found new lenses through which to understand films that frustrated or befuddled me. And I’ve had some of my most fundamental convictions about art, life, politics, and even faith challenged by things I’ve read in considerations of artists as varied as Kieslowski, Tarantino, Spielberg, Jarmusch, Ozu, Kubrick, and Miyazaki.

I also greatly appreciate those who write with a humility that suggests their perspective is their own… and thus limited, personal, and inseparable from their own experiences, preferences, and passions. Ater all, despite what you’ll read in many reviews, no one person has the authority to describe a film with words like “Most” or “Best” or “Classic.”

Oh, how critics love superlatives. I think I’m developing an allergy. I look back at certain reviews from the ’90s and I get sick to my stomach at the shows of arrogance — particularly because I wrote those reviews. “The best film of the year so far.” Who has the authority to say such a thing? Who has already seen all of the films this year has to offer? Who ever will see them all, and be able to make such a pronouncement?