This may be my last review for some time.  I don’t get out to see new movies that much anymore since they cut my pay at work.

Did you know Capt. Kirk grew up listening to the Beastie Boys?  Neither did I.

This is the Star Trek movie I’ve always wanted Paramount Pictures to make, even though most people -myself included- believed it couldn’t happen (or at least ‘wouldn’t’).

Up until now, most of the Trek movies have essentially been glorified ‘B’ pictures, produced on a modest budget by Paramount’s television department.  This is the first time we’ve ever gotten one that’s comparable in size to the other summer films out there.  This is the film that finally validates Trek.  Vindicates it.

Film is directed by J.J. Abrams (ABC’s LOST, Mission Impossible III), and stars Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine as younger versions of Spock and Kirk, respectively.  It’s an origin story, but not a true prequel.  The clever use of a ‘time travel’ premise effectively wipes the board, separating this film from the pre-existing canon.

And the movie is called, simply, ‘Star Trek.’  Familiarity with the previous series or films is NOT required, nor even necessarily recommended at this point.

Personally, I loved it.  I don’t think it achieves the maturity and near-perfection of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, or the absurdly casual sense of wonder in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.  Sometimes smaller really is better, and that certainly was the case in the 1980s when the first generation of ST feature films thrived.

But this is the first Trek I would recommend to casual viewers.  It’s hard to argue with a $79 million opening weekend gross and a 96% ‘fresh’ rating on rottentomatoes.com. I haven’t had this much fun at a ST movie since high school.

I saw it at Sam’s Town early on opening day.  Movie trailers included Pixar’s Up, Tim Burton’s 9, Transformers 2, and G.I. Joe – The Rise of Cobra.  Just the title of that last one sounds insanely stupid.  Transformers impresses me even less, and I say this having (guiltily!) enjoyed the first movie.  I am definitely curious though about 9.

The lights dim.  It’s 8:30am.  I shift in my seat, hoping to stay awake.

Multiple production cards (this one’s a first for Trek):  Paramount Pictures… Spyglass Entertainment… BAD ROBOT (yay!).  Blurry horizontal lines, familiar ‘ping’ sound effects.  Rotate image 180 degrees.  A starship, the U.S.S. Kelvin, in the 23rd century, investigating a cosmic anomaly that turns out to be a gigantic alien vessel.  Kelvin comes under attack, and her captain is quickly disposed of.  George Samuel Kirk, executive officer, assumes command and sees to the evacuation of his crew.  He then rams ship head on into the enemy, disabling them long enough for the escape pods to get away.

During this time his wife Winona gives birth to their son aboard one of the escaping shuttles, and as the two scenes are juxtaposed we get the usual cinematic manipulation tactics (muted sound effects, rush of music… sorry, but I’m just not feeling it yet.  So there).  Husband and wife come to a teary-eyed agreement over what to name their kid, before fire consumes his ship and him with it.  Cue main title, in classic TV series font, over 3-D Starfleet logo.  This really is the ‘blockbuster’ version of Trek.

It will turn out later the alien vessel is from 130 years into the future (24th century).  And these events -particularly the death of Capt. Kirk’s dad- did not happen in the prior Star Trek canon (as Kirk himself would quickly agree, back in the days when he was played by William Shatner).  In order to resuscitate Star Trek, some reassembly was required.

We then follow Kirk and Spock through a series of short cuts as they are growing up.  Jim Kirk, age 10, takes his uncle’s antique corvette out for a spin and dumps it over a canyon wall.  I have trouble taking seriously any faceless cop who hollers “citizen, PULL OVER” in that ‘badass’ sounding modulated tone of voice.  This scene played better in the trailers (“What... is YOUR name?”)

Spock meanwhile is bullied by his classmates, who regard him as less than Vulcan.  The children take their holographic school lessons inside computerized ‘holes’ in the floor, like they’re in some kind of dystopia (do you suppose they eat Soylent Green?).  The dialogue here is very Next Generation:  “This is your thirty-fifth attempt to elicit an emotional response from me.”  I did however enjoy Spock punching one classmate’s face in.  His parents Sarek and Amanda are played by Ben Cross and Winona Ryder, respectively.  Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt are sorely missed.

Movie doesn’t really pull me in until the main characters have grown up into the actors playing them.  Once Zach Quinto steps in as Spock, I am sold.  When Spock withdraws his application to the Science Academy (in favor of Starfleet), he shows a particular disdain towards the prejudiced Vulcan masters that I don’t think Nimoy himself ever could have managed.  Meanwhile Kirk’s first act (upon assuming Chris Pine’s face) is to get himself clobbered in a drunken barroom brawl with some Starfleet cadets, whereupon he meets Capt. Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood).  Pike becomes Kirk’s father figure in this alternate timeline, guiding the rebellious youth to enlist in Starfleet.

Star Trek is very much the Batman Begins of… well, Star Trek.  We rebuild it from the foundation up.  The foundation is Kirk and Spock, as it always has been.  Though more than likeable, neither of them seems a well-rounded person without the other, which is sort of the point.  Pine channels the confidence and arrogance of Kirk, without attempting to mimic Shatner’s speech patterns.  Quinto can’t quite manage the subtlety of Nimoy’s internal conflict (it’s all behind the eyes; few actors of our generation seem to have it in my opinion), but instead brings an appropriate youthfulness to Spock.

Next we bring together the supporting elements, making sure they appear naturally within the flow of the story.  The characters, the history, the essential moments.  Dr. Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (Karl Urban), who completes the Trekkian triumvirate.  If anyone ‘nailed’ their character, I think it was him.  Afro-American linguistics expert Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana), whom Kirk keeps trying to pick up, and the recurring ‘gag’ regarding her first name never having once been spoken onscreen in any of the prior episodes or films.  17-year-old navigator Pavel Chekov (Anton Yelchin, with a slightly more ‘authentic’ Russian accent than Walter Koenig’s).  Helmsman Hikaru Sulu (John Chu).  And finally Montgomery Scott (Simon Pegg).

The Enterprise, under construction on Earth, outlined by an Iowa sunset.  Starfleet Academy, in beautiful San Francisco (Headquarters is still way over on the other side of the bridge as far as I know).  The ‘classic’ Starfleet uniforms, miniskirts included (just accept it).  The Kobayashi Maru psych test.  The apple Kirk was munching in Star Trek II as he reminisced about the test (you’ll see).  The initial launching of Enterprise under Captain Pike, as told about in the series.  Pike’s unplanned early retirement (handled with much better dignity this time).  And finally the moment when Kirk assumes command.

Each supporting character gets his own personally-tailored introduction, as well as his moment to shine later on.  McCoy has the classiest intro of all.  Chekov and Sulu unfortunately have the least to do.  Most of the crew must earn their place, as their expertise are pressed into service.

Even in an alternate reality, circumstance chose these people and brought them together.  The magnificent seven.  They just came together ten years earlier in life than they were supposed to (and unfortunately Kirk’s almost-immediate promotion to captain is something we just kind of have to accept).

Their opponent is Nero (Eric Bana), a grief-obsessed Romulan everyman who has time-traveled back from the post-Next Generation era.  Nero is hardly a ‘worthy’ opponent by any stretch, nor does this origin story have time for one (this seems to be a growing trend, as both Batman Begins and Iron Man somehow performed very well without strong villains either).  When he pops up on that familiar viewscreen to demand the Enterprise crew surrender, he introduces himself with a casual “hello.”  Someone was obviously taking notes, realized ship-to-ship communiqués were among the most tedious aspects of Star Trek, and decided to do something humorously low-key here.

I should mention special guest Leonard Nimoy, reprising his role as ‘Spock Prime’ from the first generation of Star Trek series and feature films.  No Trek actor has been more protective of his character than Nimoy, and his enthusiastic participation lends a certain weight of integrity to the movie.  The Trek of old ‘still happened’, just in another lifetime, and Nimoy is our link to that past.

A major event occurs which will leave longtime fans with a “They did NOT!” reaction.  Once it happens, nobody is safe.  And all preconceptions of being bound by canon are shattered.  Freed of any ‘prequel’ constraints, Star Trek can once again go wherever it damn well wants to.

The science is about as ‘out there’ as anything Trek has ever done.  Some of the physics are handled with startling accuracy, such as two scenes that observe the ‘no sound in space’ rule (so I guess all the exterior sound effects on Trek over the last 40 years have been ‘extradiegetic’).  But on the other hand we’ve got super-size supernovas threatening the entire galaxy, black holes sending ships (and people) back through time fully intact, planetary bodies in the sky appearing MUCH larger than distance should allow, and people ‘beaming’ themselves onto moving objects from light years away (that last one is going to come back and bite the writers in the ass big time).

This movie looks nice.  The sets and props are futuristic again, while possessing a ‘tactile’ quality not even Star Trek II had quite achieved.  The use of hand-held cameras gives the film the kind of dizzy effect that made sci-fi shows like Firefly and the rebooted Battlestar Galactica seem more ‘real’ than their predecessors.  Many have complained about the oversaturation of lens flares, but I love them.  I loved them in A L I E N, Blade Runner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and I love them here.

This is a solid movie, easily up there with last summer’s Iron Man.  It's maybe just a little too fast-paced to truly be the next Batman Begins or Casino Royal.  I hesitate to call it science fiction, as I felt it crossed over into being more of a cinematic 'graphic novel' type of adventure (what with the loose science, and all that hyper-kinetic energy on display).

As a Star Trek story it has greater visual scope than anything seen before.  But it’s also more character-driven, and features perhaps the strongest acting to date (sure, Patrick Stewart, Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelly would easily outshine most of the people here, but they still had the disadvantage of being surrounded by TV performers).

Star Trek closes with a dedication to Gene and Majel Barrett Roddenberry, accompanied by more of them classic ‘ping’ sound effects.  Film is rated PG-13 for “sci-fi violence” (oh no!), and brief sexual content.

-----Hardcore radioactive ‘fan’ discussion follows-----

What, you’re still here?  Hey!  Radioactive!  I warned you…

Now I suppose the endless debate is, is it still Star Trek?

Myself, I’ve never subscribed to the notion that all of Star Trek ‘until now’ has conformed to a single, cohesive canon.  On the contrary, anybody involved who had the clout to get away with reinventing Trek (including creator Gene Roddenberry) damn well went ahead and did just that.

Whereas stagnation resulted whenever the creative staff tried to remain slavishly faithful to whatever (they thought) had worked before.

At the very least, I see Star Trek as being split between the two ‘generations’.  Everything up until 1986 is generation one; everything from 1987-2005 (i.e., the Rick Berman years) is generation two.  This movie marks the beginning of generation three.  Star Trek Enterprise, even though it was a prequel set 100 years before the original, was a second generation series.

(There is some overlap:  the artistically pretentious Star Trek The Motion Picture was very much a spiritual forerunner to The Next Generation, while Star Treks V and VI -with their more classic cowboy diplomacy- were like first generation stragglers who didn’t realize the party had ended.)

Second generation had its share of achievements.  Star Trek The Next Generation remains the most successful Trek series to date, with still the largest female demographic.  It is also the ‘purest’ version of Roddenberry’s future utopia.  Deep Space Nine is considered the most ‘grown up’ of all the Trek series.  But Voyager and Enterprise were essentially uninspired Next Generation clones -frankly unwatchable- while First Contact was the only reasonably good TNG film.  It was like the enormous success of TNG doomed almost everything that came afterward into being a studio-mandated photocopy.

Generation two had a very particular vibe, sound and creed to it.  The nautical, swashbuckling elements of generation one had been discarded in favor of a more streamlined, politically-correct and ‘scientifically accurate’ approach.  Gene Roddenberry wanted a show that was more ‘hard’ sci-fi and less action adventure, consequently TNG was a reinvention first and a sequel second.

The feature films II-VI meanwhile were practically a sub-generation unto themselves, with II: The Wrath of Khan being Nick Meyer’s more ‘militaristic’ reinvention of Star Trek.

This is not a gripe on my part.  When you get invited to write for Star Trek, you had better reinvent it and make it your own.  If you don’t have a unique vision for the material, then we don’t want you.  (Hardcore fans will of course argue otherwise, but most of them don’t know what they want)

Which brings me back to second generation Trek.  What killed Star Trek for me was that -during this entire span of time- the aforementioned sound, vibe and creed of the franchise never changed.  From the production aesthetic (sets, wardrobe, lighting, camera angles, editing, music composition), to the technobabble-laced dialogue and arbitrary-sounding moral messages, the final season of Enterprise in 2005 looked almost exactly like the first season of TNG almost eighteen years earlier.

So I guess what I’m saying here are two things.  First, Trek badly needed a change with this movie, and a major one at that.  And second, regarding this notion among fans that the new movie “shits all over” established canon… really, I think it’s kind of debatable whether there ever was a truly ‘consistent’ canon in the first place.  And when there finally was, most of us tuned out because we became bored to death with it.

In all of Star Trek, I think only one incarnation of it has ever been more than 85% faithful to the original series (TOS).  And that was the seldom-remembered 1973 animated series.  (By the way, does anybody else feel as I do… that despite its limited production values TOS was still by far the most ‘cinematic’ of all the Trek TV shows?)

What’s striking about this movie, is that it openly celebrates the original in a way that even movies II-VI never did.  The primary-colored pajamas are back.  The main title sequence (featured at movie’s end) presents the Alexander Courage theme in its entirety.  The titles themselves splash by in what seems an awkward marriage between TOS and Superman (or perhaps Lost in Space The Movie).  Even the classic sound effects (which have already appeared with more subtlety in movies IV-VI, if you really listen for them) return here in full force, courtesy of Star Wars sound designer Ben Burtt.

Clearly J.J. Abrams and company wanted to get as far away from the TNG-verse as possible.  I would have preferred a return to the look of the earlier films (complete with that classy ‘galaxy’ title font established in ST: The Motion Picture), not to mention the Enterprise herself never looked more beautiful than during that time.  However, I suppose even those movies lack the iconic power of the original series.  In order for Spider-Man to ‘speak’ to moviegoers, you needed the ‘nerdy’ Peter Parker from the 1960s rather than the more self-assured (and less remembered) Peter from the 80s.  The same reasoning could apply here.

I’m not fond of the new ‘warp speed’ effects.  Too damn loud, for one thing, and a little too Star Warsy for me.  Warping out into the middle of a debris field (as if they might have avoided collision entirely had they stayed in hyperspace) felt very Star Wars.  I miss the scenic beauty of warp travel.  I’m glad we’re done with them TNG-era ‘kaleidoscope’ starfields; it was definitely time for something different after 18 years.  But I sure wouldn’t mind seeing those Starship America Red/White/Blue vapor trails again.

(I do like the ‘warp’ poster.  I think more movie posters should be nice and simple, just like this, with plain white backgrounds.)

Does the movie have the ‘optimism’ of Star Trek?  I would say that it does.  It’s not ‘preachy’ though, which is a good thing.  Movies speak a different language than television, and I think only a couple of the prior Trek films have really understood that.

Most ‘blockbuster’ movies have fairly straightforward messages, or themes, once you boil them down.  Spider-Man’s message is “with great power comes great responsibility.”  I mean it’s right there, in the dialogue, and all three films center around it.

Star Trek, when you boil it down, is and has always been about family and teamwork.  So in that respect, this movie nails it.  As long as Trek remains a ‘movie’ franchise (and I’m really not eager to see it return to television anytime soon), dialogue that is more on-the-nose about the brightness of mankind’s future or what-have-you will have to wait.

Consider this:  in any other Hollywood movie, a massive planetary drill falling into San Francisco Bay would almost certainly have taken out the Golden Gate Bridge with it, just to score another ‘popcorn’ moment.  But that will never happen on Star Trek.  Not in the capitol city of Roddenberry’s 23rd century utopia.

I refer to the second Nite Owl, Batman’s look-alike distant cousin if you will, from the movie Watchmen… based on the popular 1986 limited-run comic by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.  The comic has been considered by many fans -as well as Moore himself- to be ‘unfilmable’.

Dan Dreiberg, a.k.a. the Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson), is just one of a half-dozen primary costumed vigilantes (superheroes) introduced in Watchmen.  Which is frankly a lucky thing for him, since this is one Batman who’s gonna need some serious help.

Later in the movie he will try to have sex with his new on-the-rebound girlfriend Laurie Juspeczyk, a.k.a. the Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman)… only to discover they both need their costumes in order for him to get it up.  Apparently heroes really do have costume fetishes.

Laurie has some neurotic issues of her own, mostly related to her strained relationship with her mother, the first Silk Spectre.  “I’m used to going out at 3am and doing something stupid,” she shrugs.

Her ex-boyfriend Jon Osterman, a.k.a. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), has had his body demoleculerized by the “Intrinsic Field Subtractor.” In reconstituted form he has blue skin and lives in a quantum state, possessing an awareness that may transcend time and space.  Despite his attachment to Laurie, he begins to regard humanity as if through a microscope.  (“She’ll be back,” his co-worker scientists reassure him after she storms out.  “No she won’t,” Manhattan replies.  Because she doesn’t.  He’s already foreseen it).

Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), is perhaps a ‘truer’ Batman than Dreiberg, with his uncompromising back-and-white morality.  Imagine if Bruce Wayne crawled into his Batsuit one day and just never came back out.  Rorschach’s cold friendship with Dreiberg may be the only humanity left in him.  He wears a detective’s hat and trenchcoat, and keeps his face hidden behind a white mask covered in perpetually-shifting inkblots.  His raspy voice ‘narrates’ the movie in classic film noir fashion.

Finally there is Edward Blake, a.k.a. The Comedian.  A holdover from the previous generation of costumed crimefighters, he once had a relationship with Laurie’s mom –whom he also tried to rape.  We’ll later see him shooting a pregnant Vietnamese woman during the war (now would that constitute double homicide?  Consider your political values carefully before committing to an answer).  Thankfully, he is now dead.  But who was he?  His story is told mostly in flashback.  The last words out of his mouth were: “It’s a joke.  It’s all a joke.  Mother forgive me.”

In comic book tradition these heroes make up a team of sorts.  If you could call them that.

“Rorschach's Journal. November 12th, 1985: Dog carcass in alley this morning. Tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout ‘Save us!’  And I'll whisper… ‘NO’.”

The setting is New York of 1985, and masked vigilantes have been commonplace since the 1940s.  One of them shot John. F. Kennedy.  They also helped America win the Vietnam War, enabling President Nixon (Robert Wisden) to remain in office four consecutive terms (he is now serving his fifth). The Cold War between the US/USSR has been amped up a couple notches… with the Doomsday Clock (Nixon’s version of our own bloody color-coded terror alert system) perpetually set at five minutes to midnight Outside it is constantly raining, while inside “99 Luftballons” seemingly plays out of every restaurant jukebox.  If ever a time when we needed our heroes, that time is now.

Unfortunately superhero activity has been outlawed by the Nixon administration, forcing the Watchmen into early retirement.  Blake/The Comedian had stayed on as a black ops agent for the government, while Dr. Manhattan has been helping the U.S. develop a clean, renewable source of energy.  Rorschach continues to work as a rogue underground detective.  The assassination of Blake, in his high-rise apartment, reunites the Watchmen to investigate a plot that could threaten global nuclear holocaust.

Although ‘inspired’ by various figures from the Marvel/DC Comics superhero catalogs, each of the Watchmen is an original character created by Moore for this story.  It was Moore’s intention to address public anxieties of the time (Reaganism, Thatcherism, nuclear proliferation), as well as ‘deconstruct’ (how I’ve come to hate that word) some of the familiar superhero archetypes.

Like our own politicians, Moore’s fallible heroes are on a quest to save the world from themselves.  They are the heroes we need, and the heroes we might be better off without.  And they know it.  The title is a reference to the phrase “Who watches the watchmen? (quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)”

Though I still have not read the comic, two factors drew me to this movie.  First, I had been completely blown away by the trailer that circulated last summer along with The Dark Knight… and in particular by that line Rorschach delivers in the trailer (see above).

Second, I’m fascinated by this recent Hollywood trend with the ‘grounded’ superhero, if you will.  When I tried to turn my sister onto Heroes (back when the show was still good), I pitched it to her as ‘Unbreakable: The Series’ (though I had not seen M. Knight Shyamalan’s Unbreakable at the time, and am no longer certain it’s an accurate description).  As I mentioned in my Dark Knight review, I would place the current cycle of Batman movies in this family as well.  Iron Man might be stretching it.  Watchmen isn’t really part of this trend either, but could be viewed as a distant forerunner to it. 

If anything gave me pause, it was the news that Zack Snyder had been chosen to direct.  I will not even waste my time articulating the things I hated about his last film, 300.  Was WB really going to trust a video game director, of meaningless testosterone schlock, to adapt the “most acclaimed graphic novel of all time”?

Film opens rather stylishly, with the WB, Paramount, Legendary Pictures and DC title cards printed as mere black outlines on a yellow backdrop that becomes the familiar smiley-face logo so commonly associated with Watchmen.  We witness Blake’s assassination, then segue into one of the greatest opening title sequences EVER:

It’s a montage of slow-moving photograph-like images, pushing us from the 1940s into the ‘alternative present’ of 1985.  We meet the first generation of caped crusaders (‘The Minutemen’, as they called themselves), witness their retirement, and then plunge into Vietnam and the election of Richard Nixon.  All of this is edited to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’”.

Okay.  I absolutely hate Bob Dylan and always have.  But I love this intro.  His repeated line “Don’t criticize what you can’t understand” seems to sneer at us as we try to absorb the info that’s crammed into this sequence.  Who are all these people dropping like flies?  Are they supporting characters from the comic book?  Or actual historical figures that ‘everyone’ (besides me) already knows about?  (For example, does the image of a firing squad -with one woman tucking a flower into the rifle that’s about to gun her down- mean anything to any of you?)

Unfortunately I cannot say the movie overall was anything close to great.  However it was half great.  The first half of it was great.

The problem is Zack Snyder.  Alexandra DuPont, in her review over at AintItCoolNews, summed it up best:  a good director’s gotta have brains, balls and heart.  Snyder is mostly balls, period.

Okay, that’s a little harsh.  He does have certain talent as a cinematographer, his reputed overindulgence of slow-motion notwithstanding.  Watchmen has been called the Blade Runner of superhero comics, and indeed this movie has a kind of Blade Runner magic going for it.  It is dark, crisp, rainy, colorful and yet very cold.

The problem is, we come to a point where the movie absolutely needs to warm up if we’re to accept the world truly is in danger of ending.  Only Snyder can’t do it.  He can’t handle nuance.  He can’t generate sympathy.  He probably couldn’t even pick up on his girlfriend’s nonverbal communication… which might explain the masculinity issues behind all the violence and blood that he pours into his films.  He is tone deaf.

It’s not just that.  The pacing itself seems to be off throughout the entire second half.  After the movie stops for the aforementioned intermission of Nite Owl/Silk Spectre costume fetish sex (performed to the song “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen… don’t even get me started on that), it just never quite seems to get moving again.  Entire chapters seem superfluous, as though perhaps they should’ve been omitted altogether.  Is it sacrilege for me to even suggest that?

What does the story accomplish by stripping Rorschach of his mask in prison?  Or by teleporting Silk Spectre to Mars to have a conversation with Dr. Manhattan –a conversation he is convinced is pointless, having already foreseen its occurrence beat by beat, even though she somehow manages to turn him around regardless?  Maybe these parts just needed to be trimmed, and because of that their significance was lost?

When the Big Bad finally happens, it happens mostly unseen by the main characters.  And by us.  Crater-size pockets of devastation in the city are all fine and good, but… where are the reaction shots?  Where is the shock and denial?  What happened to those moments in between the spoken lines?  Were they just not filmed?  Nuance.

Another thing I noticed, was the music seemed to get a lot louder towards the end.  Almost eardrum-shattering loud.  I think that says something.  Whereas it’s usually the special effects that are supposed to do a number on your ears, here it seemed instead like composer Tyler Bates was trying too hard to compensate for the limitation of actors and script (if I’m not mistaken, didn’t he score The Day The Earth Stood Still remake?  I still have that review somewhere, half-written).

The casting falls all across the board.

Arguably the film’s strongest performance goes to Jackie Haley’s Rorschach.  Consider that we hardly see his face at all (and when we finally do, we really wish we didn’t).  His is the portrait of a man who’s been beaten down by society and hardened to the point of almost losing his humanity altogether.  His absolutism seduces the darker side in each of us, a part of ourselves we wish we could openly embrace.  Never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon (why does spellcheck want me to capitalize that word, anyway?).  My favorite of all his little ‘idiosyncratic’ moments is when he’s eating beans straight out of a can that he helped himself to in Nite Owl’s kitchen.  (Dreiberg: “Do you want me to heat those for you?”  Rorschach: “Hrm”).

Equally effective is Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Blake/The Comedian.  Which is probably not a compliment, as there is little to redeem this character… at least in this film version.  Should you even be allowed to cry, or show remorse (or any feelings at all, for that matter) once you’ve committed murder and rape?  I’m not sure if I have an answer to that.  Why do the Watchmen keep him around, when surely his participation tarnishes them just as his very humanity diminishes the rest of us?  (I’m being somewhat rhetorical here.  If you really don’t mind having your moral integrity challenged by your darker side, check out Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange sometime).  “What happened to the American dream?” Nite Owl asks Blake, aghast, after watching him gun down a mob of rioters.  Blake’s answer is to shrug: “It came true.”

Billy Crudup more or less works, I suppose, as Dr. Manhattan… the only superhero with actual superhuman abilities.  What if Superman was unavailable to save the world because he was busy having an existential midlife crisis pondering the higher nature of Life, the Universe and Everything?  What if you could turn the fabric of time itself sideways and look at it, like a piece of paper, to see what was written about the remainder of your life?  And what if it said you were destined to never find love?  Or worse, what if it said you wouldn’t any longer care that you didn’t?

I really couldn’t tell you about Patrick Wilson’s Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II, as I still don’t understand who he’s supposed to be exactly.  He rises above his impotency (I swear no pun was intended) whenever he’s in costume, however he never quite sheds his clumsily friendly cop-walks-children-across-the-street persona.  I couldn’t tell if his performance was meant to be satirical or sincere.  I suppose you could flip a coin.

Have I even mentioned Mathew Goode as Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias?  I don’t believe I have.  Probably the single most important character where the actual plot is concerned, and all we know about him is his love for Alexander the Great.  Was it the director’s interpretation of Ozymandias -with those glam tights of his- that he was mostly full of himself and could not channel any actual charisma?  Or did Goode simply not manage to find his character before it was time to shoot?  What motivates this guy, anyway?  I need more.

Finally, as Silk Spectre II, Malin Akerman didn’t impress at all.  Most of her lines fell completely flat.

Adapting Watchmen for the screen has been a complicated affair, with no less than four major studios claiming rights to the title since 1988.  Prior directors attached to the project have included Terry Gilliam, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass.  And for many years, an ‘updated’ setting for the movie was considered.  To give Snyder credit where credit is due, it was he who pushed against the studios to preserve the graphic novel’s 1985 Cold War setting, along with its darker ending and the ‘R’ rating that he felt was appropriate.  Whether or not these were the right choices, this is the version we got.

Suppose we decided the 1980s threat of nuclear armageddon just seemed too dated or too ‘trite’ a concept to really resonate with today’s mainstream audiences (Which?  It actually kinda is).  Alright then, what would we update it to?  Bush’s war on terror?  Climate change?  The global economic recession?  While all of these elements conspire to create today’s general feeling of dread, I doubt that any one of them, in and of itself, could prove a tangible enough threat for a story of this kind.

Another reviewer whose name I cannot recall (oh hell, I’ve always wanted to sneer in the face of ‘plagiarism!’ accusations anyway) brought up the point that most moviegoers’ familiarity with superhero comics is limited to their cinematic adaptations.  In which
case, perhaps an adaptation of Watchmen would be better served ‘deconstructing’ superheroes as they have been portrayed on film rather than in comic form.  Since I don’t read a lot of comics myself, I leave it to better people to decide whether this makes sense.

I say again, I loved the first half of the movie, perhaps enough to recommend it overall.  I even think it speaks to us.  There is no one character I most relate to (although more than one of those “which Watchman are you?” quizzes has identified me as the impotent Nite Owl… scary!), but rather I suspect each of us is all of these people in part.

We all see, at one time or another, that the world really is “all a joke” and we are powerless to change anything in it.  We have trouble “getting it up” during those crucial moments when we try to demand more out of life (I recently bombed a job interview in which the position applied for was completely within my grasp… they had even told me I was the first person they called.  It happens).  We find ourselves strangely disconnected from the world, and unable to maintain our relationships.  We rarely seem to have the approval of our parents (because if we did, we would never grow).  We are often somewhat narcissistic, and suffer from this irrational need to be remembered, as if the things we have to say really mean anything in the long run.  Perhaps most fatal of all, we would rather be even more wrong, with the world as witness, than be heard admitting we were wrong in the first place. Never compromise.

I don’t know if the movie needed an ‘R’ rating, as the blood in it was way too excessive to be in any way shocking.  Pacing problems, lack of character empathy, a seemingly watered-down ending and a gratuitously over-the-top ‘sex intermission’ ultimately prevented this film, in my opinion, from realizing its full potential.

If you haven’t seen this movie already, if you can even find it in your neighborhood, definitely check it out.

Unfortunately it took a while for ‘Milk’ to make it here to Vegas.  And then the first week that it did, it was playing exclusively at the Century Suncoast on the west side of town (Alan Stock, CEO for Century/Cinemark theaters, reportedly donated $10,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 measure which disastrously passed last November.  He’s obviously rich enough that he doesn’t need my money).

Where I finally saw it in mid-December, was at the new Town Square mall near the area where I work.

This city changes right underneath my nose, and I am both awed and disgusted by the fact.  An entire outdoor shopping village, where a couple years back was only a modest casino (now gone) surrounded by undeveloped land.  And hidden away in back, on a hill where you’d never think to look for it, was the new ‘RAVE! Theaters’ that was playing my movie.  Even flashier than Brendan Theaters, this place with its ugly neon greens and oranges has ‘iGeneration’ written all over it.  The seats were damn uncomfortable.

Compare to the Landmark Hillcrest in San Diego, where I saw ‘Milk’ a second time with my sister over the holidays.  Now there was the perfect place for seeing an independent film like this. As my sister noted, it’s ‘kinda’ like the old Gem Theater (now condemned) back in our home town.  Only classier.  You wouldn’t go there to catch ‘The Dark Knight’ in THX six-track Dolby digital… but then that’s kind of a moot point since I somehow doubt most ‘commercial’ films make it to the Hillcrest anyway.

Now I like Milk.  Just like.  I like it on my cereal… preferably the Trader Joe's brand of ginger-flavored granola with almond and cashew slices.  Almost anything with yogurt in it is good.  Seems ‘drinkable’ yogurt has become rather popular with the kids these days (we called it kefir when I was growing up).  ‘Plain’ yogurt is especially good with a couple spoonfuls of orange juice mixed in.  Apparently you can even put yogurt in burritos as a substitute for sour cream.  The best shrimp burrito is at Bueno Y Sano in Amherst, MA.  Almost anything with cheese on it, I’m there (Mexican food goes without saying).  I used to like cottage cheese, but that changed in high school.  I’m still not sure what happened there, although coming across a poisoned bear while hiking through the backcountry probably didn’t help.  The poor thing was being decomposed by maggots.  People say rice looks like maggots, but it doesn’t.  Cottage cheese looks like maggots.

When I heard there was a new gay movie by the name of ‘Milk’, I at first wondered what the title might possibly refer to.  But then a college friend on Facebook alerted me to the Cinemark/Alan Stock boycott that was taking place, and on that same day I caught an NPR story where the spokesperson was interviewing San Francisco residents who were still haunted by the shootings of both Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone back in 1978.  It seems Milk was a much respected public figure at the time that my family was living in the Bay Area.  Both my parents remembered him, though they didn’t have a strong opinion about him one way or the other.  I would’ve been about four years old when he was assassinated.

Who was this guy?  Well, he was the first ‘openly’ gay man to be elected to public office:  specifically the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, where he served for almost a year before he was shot and killed by rival supervisor Dan White. If you didn’t already know about this, then you are in good company.  Point is, he’s something of an icon in San Francisco and a hero among the gay community.  Months before his death, he recorded in his will “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.”  He didn’t choose politics; politics chose him.  Circumstance chose him.  We chose him.

Milk is played by none other than Sean Penn.

I’ve never liked Penn.  I avoided just about every film he starred in, perhaps because he seemed like your typical chain-smoking, womanizing ‘bad boy’ player type who beats up paparazzi. The kind of man that unlucky guys absolutely cannot stand.  I saw the movie ‘Into the Wild’ that he directed, about that real-life drifter who starved to death in the Alaskan wilderness (not even bothering to look up his name), and thought it was the most pretentious waste of celluloid ever conceived of.  Basically turned a truly tragic story of dumb foolhardiness into a spiritual vision quest or some such nonsense.

Regardless, Sean Penn is an excellent Harvey Milk, his transformation so fully realized that I can barely recognize him as Penn at all.  Even looking at the movie poster, you see the face of a character with such tremendous power and charisma; a man who channels that power through honest humility rather than intensity.  Like a certain president we elected around the time this movie was headed towards its limited release (eight more days, people!), this is a person you can easily imagine standing right there in the room with you as he speaks.  A leader who can defuse a potentially violent situation with the simple words:  “My name is Harvey Milk, and I’m here to recruit you.”

I want to believe.  At age 34, I don’t know if I’ve ever believed. When has our generation, or the generation before it, been allowed to believe?  Watergate was being exposed at the time I was born.  Vietnam came knocking at many of our parents’ doors, with that arrogant, self-satisfied smirk on its face.  And everywhere it became cool to not believe, because we couldn’t trust you anymore.

And no politician today would ever say “I’m here to recruit you,” because those words just aren’t marketable.  Calling on sacrifice, from the people whose votes you seek to get elected, has become too radioactive.

But if you were a gay living in the 1970s, and felt your livelihood threatened by the faces of Anita Bryant or John “it’s just politics” Briggs coming out of your TV set, and you were angry, then you answered the call to action and you believed.

Besides, anyone who can pacify an angry crowd with "My name is Harvey Milk, and I'm here to recruit you," has already more than earned my respect.

Film covers Milk’s life from the time he came out of the closet at age 40 with his younger lover Scott Smith (James Franco), up to his death in November 1978.  They left for San Francisco seeking to be more openly accepted, and settled in the gay neighborhood of The Castro where they opened up a camera shop.  But they became discouraged by the persecution and oppression that gays encountered in the once Irish-Catholic community.

Using his skills as a former businessman, Milk became a gay activist and ran two unsuccessful campaigns for the Board of Supervisors before Scott left him.  He finally won a seat on the board after his third campaign in 1977.  And it was during his one year in office that the dreaded Briggs Initiative (Proposition 6, which would have mandated the firing of gay teachers and supporters from California schools) would rear its ugly head.

Throughout the picture Milk ‘narrates’ these events as he records his aforementioned will on audiotape.  And every day pulls us closer to the time of his fateful assassination.  Milk had been receiving death threats throughout his political career (which he humorously kept taped to the fridge, in plain sight, where they couldn’t grow scarier and overwhelm him).  But comparing him to Martin Luther King Jr. would be a stretch, since it wasn’t his activism than killed him.

It was Dan White (Josh Brolin), a fellow supervisor on the board, with whom Milk had formed a somewhat uncomfortable friendship.  Milk could be supportive almost to a fault, as evidenced by his failed romantic relationship with Jack Lira (Diego Luna,with ‘puppy’ written all over his face), whose own jealous neurosis eventually led him to hang himself.  Apparently Milk felt he saw some part of himself in the married-but-isolated, conservatively Catholic Mr. White (“I think he’s one of us,” Penn comments at one point).

Was Dan White gay?  Or is director Gus Van Sant merely playing with himself on this one?  I’m inclined to assume the latter, since there would be no historical evidence on which to support whether White ‘may have been’ a closeted gay… though I’ll admit the possibility does create a more colorful character portrait than does the ‘Twinkie defense’.  It would also make his unbalanced plight all the more tragic.

Josh Brolin comes to this film fresh off of starring in ‘W.’as the title character (eight more days, people!).  I avoided that movie because I find Oliver Stone annoyingly pretentious.  But now I’m curious.

Brolin plays White as completely unreachable, buried underneath layers of misdirected anger.  Milk failed to come through for him on opposing some unspecified mental institution proposal, and White never forgave Milk for it.  When he asked for his job back, days after resigning from the board, he was denied.  City Hall witnesses said they heard shouting in Mayor Moscone’s office, followed by gunshots.  White had entered through a basement window to avoid metal detection.

The only other film I’ve seen by Gus Sant was ‘Too Die For’ in 1995, with Nicole Kidman.  So upset was I afterward that I avoided everything else she starred in up until ‘The Others’.  Thankfully I had already committed myself to seeing this movie before I realized it was by the same director.  Gus plays with using various film stocks for the cinematography of ‘Milk’, and all but the most intimate of scenes have that excessively ‘grainy’ look that film did in the late 70s.  I must say, the effect felt rather authentic in recreating the Bay Area as I (very dimly) remember it.

Milk is rated R for strong language, mild sexual content and violence.

I'd been meaning to catch this film since it came out, but couldn't make the time until last weekend.  Anyway my dad was in town working on his car, crashing at my place a couple days longer than I would have preferred, so I dragged him out to some movies.

We also saw Quantum of Solace, which I may review later if I ever get around to it.  If you like Bond at all, definitely check it out.  Appaloosa, which we caught last time Dad was passing through town, was also on my list of 'backlogged' reviews… although I think I missed my window on that one.  Worth seeing if you can still find it.

We picked the Century Orleans on Tropicana for this one.  The only trailer I remember being attached was Milk, starring Sean Penn.  Ironically, I've just found Century Orleans is on the 'boycott' list of theaters owned by Alan Stock; see Facebook page for details.

Changeling is a film directed by Clint Eastwood, based on a true story.

The setting is 1920s Los Angeles.  An especially clean and beautiful Los Angeles, just as my grandmother had always fondly remembered it.  A city that never was.  A city stifling in corruption and oppression.  Perhaps my grandmother remembered that too, and I just wasn't listening.

Angelina Jolie plays Christine Collins, a single mom working in LA as a telephone company supervisor, who returns home one fateful day to find her son missing.  She calls the police, but they will not take action until twenty-four hours have passed.

Months later she's informed the boy has been found, and the LAPD -hungry to repair its already ruined reputation- arranges a public reunion between mother and son before the press.  Except the boy is not her son.  Laughably, the police ignore Collins' protests, persuading her to take the boy home "on a trial basis."

Her submissive reaction at this point would seem almost unthinkable, for anyone willing to forget the psychological helplessness of being opposed by uncompromising elements.  In public, surrounded by cameras, pressured by authority figures and not wanting to make a scene, she gives in to her self doubt… placing her arm around the boy for the front page of the newspapers.  The movie audience scoffs at her.  We'll forget to remember, choose not to understand.

The boy is three inches shorter than her son, his teacher doesn't recognize him, and his teeth don't match his dental records.  The LADP hires a doctor to 'explain' these discrepancies, and pressures the woman's neighbors into identifying the kid as her own.  A newspaper article surfaces, questioning whether Collins is truly 'fit' to be a mother.  After telling her story before a press conference, she is invited back to the police station and subsequently disappears into a mental institution.

The story of being locked away in a women's hospital, circa 1920, is a potential movie in and of itself.  Most of Collins' inmates are people who have pissed off the police in some way or other, and at least one of them appears lobotomized.  In short order she finds herself hosed, drugged, force-fed and given shock treatments.  When she tries to convince the head doctor of her sanity, he twists her meaning around so skillfully I could not catch the moment when it happened.  Every conceivable behavior on her part conveniently fits somebody's preconception of what insanity is.

All she must do to be released is sign a letter admitting she was mistaken about the boy.  But she knows she can't.  She's not out to fight the power; she just wants her son back.

Intersecting this plotline is the story of the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, with Jason Butler Harner as the butchering psychopath Gordon Northcott (easily the strongest performance we see here).  Wisely, no attempt is made at explaining this guy.  He is just the very definition of unreachable.  Sanity took one look at him, turned and walked away with her arms raised in resignation.

Film also stars John Malkovich as Reverend Gustav Briegleb (not bothering to check if I spelled that right), Jeffrey Donovan as the contemptuous Captain Jones, and Michael Kelly as the mostly-sympathetic Detective Ybarra.  Briegleb is likeable for not wasting valuable movie time trying to save Collins' soul from itself (or whatever); rather he's made it his mission to publicly rant against the corruption and incompetence of the LAPD, and serves as Collins' only real ally during her plight.

Most of the supporting characters, from the doctors to the police, practically have "I am evil" stamped on their foreheads.  Angelina Jolie manages a competent enough performance (this is probably the first time I've ever actually 'liked' her in anything), but almost everyone else's delivery suffered from an annoying lack of nuance.

The script, written by J. Michael Straczynski, goes out of its way to telegraph -in advance- the problematics of dealing with the LAPD or the medical profession of 1928.  I hardly think that was necessary, since we'll see the obstacles that lie in Collin's path soon enough.

JMS is perhaps best known for his work as creator and show runner for the modest mid-90s sci-fi series Babylon 5, itself a story about corruption and oppression (as well as the occasional galactic war).  Despite his deserved reputation for having something of an ego, he is probably first to admit that he tends to 'overwrite' his characters and dialogue.  That Clint Eastwood chose to develop his first draft as the shooting script, may also have been a factor here.

This isn't to say that I didn't like the movie.  But unfortunately its on-the-nose dialogue and general lack of subtlety did pull me out of the story in more than a few places.  I wanted to believe these things were happening to this woman, because I already believe it all to well.  I just didn't believe it watching the movie.  The characters are so sadistic, you wonder if perhaps the doctors torturing Collins were 'in' on what the police were hiding.  Even the child imposter seems smugly indifferent to the suffering he knows he's caused. We don't come to this type of movie to boo and hiss.  We came hoping to glimpse through the looking glass into a true story, about a broken system that defies understanding, and yet tells us something of who we are.

For comparison's sake, I want to bring up another famous movie set in 'corrupt' LA of the late 20s:  that being 1974's Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.  Though not a true story in itself, this film noir was heavily inspired by the LA Water Wars of that time.  A real Hollywood classic.  They say one of the most important rules in writing is that people almost never say exactly what they mean.  And indeed, we spend a whole movie very specifically NOT hearing what Faye Dunaway has to tell about herself, until Nicholson is thoroughly convinced she's the one hiding something.  Until she finally blurts out the truth under duress, in those heart-shattering six words that would completely spoil the movie if I repeated them here.

Overall I liked it (Changeling, I mean).  Just liked.  For an Eastwood-directed feature, I was a little disappointed.  For a JMS-scripted movie… I haven't decided yet.  But I wish him better luck next time.

I had the pleasure of attending an interview with JMS at the Screenwriter's EXPO barely two weeks ago, where he talked about his career as a writer for television and his recent success with breaking into feature films (Changeling being his first).  Sitting in a room full aspiring writers, I found him to be a much more sympathetic person than I had previously believed.  "The world doesn't want you to believe in yourself," he acknowledged at one point after relating his first (stuttering) phone conversation with the notoriously abrasive Harlan Ellison -with whom he would later become close friends.  That comment (which would have made a perfect tagline for my own script) should've been my cue to walk up afterward and introduce myself, I realized in retrospect.

Happy Thanksgiving y'all,

-Sam

"They did finish the movie, right?"

Those were my exact words -more or less- when we ran the story of Heath Ledger's death on our 11pm news last whenever it was.  I was running master control, our internal mics were on, and the technical director was playing 'trailer' footage of the new Batman movie over the news anchor's V.O.  I probably already knew principal photography had wrapped, but I just couldn't resist the opportunity to say the wrong thing:  yes we know he's dead, but just tell me they finished the movie.

In my defense, this could well be the most eagerly-anticipated comic book movie ever made.  The startling thing about 'The Dark Knight' is that it actually manages to fulfill its promise after so much media frenzy.

I saw it with my dad Saturday 19 at the Palms (where else).  Tried to get tickets for the IMAX screening there, but it was sold out.

Movie trailers included the new James Bond, the 'Day the Earth Stood Still' remake, and 'The Mummy 3' (yet again).  I'm probably up for Bond.  'Earth' looks to have potential; I figure Keanu Reeves ought to be able to play an alien of all things easily enough.

You're also guaranteed to catch a teaser for 'The Watchmen', which looks really interesting… is there anyone here who's familiar with it by chance?  The new Harry Potter trailer was supposed to be attached as well, however we did not see it.

'Batman Begins' surprised the hell out of us in 2005 just by not sucking.  The signs that we were getting a new, innovative take on the Batman legend had been there for some time, but I think most of us refused to let ourselves be convinced until we saw.

My initial impression was that Christopher Nolan's movie overcompensated in trying to distance itself from the Joel Schumacher entries (for at the time I still saw Tim Burton's 1989 'Batman' as the definitive adaptation).  The character of Ra's al Ghul was unfamiliar to me, leaving the film's diminished role of the Scarecrow as the only classic villain in sight.  Could you really waste half a superhero movie with your hero facing off against a lowly mob boss, even one played by Tom Wilkinson?  ("Technically, the procedure itself is brain damage")

In retrospect, it just took a while for me to appreciate Nolan's scaled back approach to the superhero mythos, something I think 'Batman Begins' now shares in common with the likes of 'Heroes' and M. Night Shyamalan's 'Unbreakable'.  'Make Batman real' has become the new mission statement.  This is why the Bat-signal now only works when you put clouds in the sky to bounce it off of.  But could a radically reimagined premise such as this really sustain itself as an ongoing series?

In a word, yes.  Or at least it now seems more likely.  'The Dark Knight' is in fact even more gritty and down-to-Earth than its predecessor.  To quote Roger Ebert (not that I fully agree with him on this point), Batman isn't a comic book anymore.

"Let me get this straight.  You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands.  And your plan is to blackmail this person?  Good luck."
            -Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman)

For having a more straightforward premise than any other Batman film to date, 'The Dark Knight' features some of the most complex plotting I've ever seen.  Doing a linear synopsis on the film has proved problematic.  But basically there are three threads here:

First the Joker.  He introduces himself robbing a bank with the help of some hired 'clowns', each of them instructed to kill one another off once his task is finished.  Now established as the villain, he gets hired on by crime boss Sal Maroni to eliminate 'the Batman' (Maroni is incidentally played by the smirking Eric Roberts of 'Heroes' fame:  "What am I thinking now, Mr. Parkman?").  Joker wages psychological warfare against the people of Gotham City, intent on immobilizing Batman by appealing to his integrity of character.

Up-and-coming distract attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) wants in on the action helping Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Batman (Christian Bale) bring down Maroni.  Despite early warning signs of the contrary, Dent is heralded as the White Knight who will restore hope for the people of Gotham.

Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, wants to retire as Batman and get back together with would-be girlfriend Rachael Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes from the first movie.  Everyone seems to think she's a major improvement over Katie, but I found them both equally annoying).  Adding to his anxiety is the fact that Harvey seems to already have a head start with Rachael.  When is something like that ever not the case?

But Harvey comes to this movie with his own built-in story arc, as most Batfans already know.  With that, there's more than enough information above to figure out how the threads will tie together… and it sure ain't pretty.  We don't want pretty.  There's a reason we only accept Batman as the Dark Knight, as opposed to the Caped Crusader.  He should only wear black, and Robin is not invited.

I have not mentioned the endless talk of money laundering (I never know what that means anyway), the trips to China, the kidnappings (no less than six by my count), the death threats against people whose names I forgot to remember (oops… now the importance of another action sequence will be lost on me), the deaths that have been greatly exaggerated (just how do you stay informed after you've faked your own death, anyway?), the ones that haven't (let's just say fans will be very pleased, even though the movie tries to serve up some teary-eyed final words), or the dozens of wanna-be vigilantes dressed as Batman himself.  What I mean by simple yet complicated.

By the way, if anybody can explain to me Bruce Wayne's detective work (shooting bullets into bricks to extract fingerprints or something?) it would be greatly appreciated.  Or how he came to be in the place of the next attempted assassination (the funeral march), or for that matter whether the Mayer was killed in that scene or not (I couldn't tell).

I was also confused by the whole 'sonarvision' thing towards the end.  Was that pea soup supposed to represent Batman's P.O.V.?  Or just typical cyberspace "no one is actually seeing this, it just looks really cool" nonsense?

The action sequences in general are choppy and difficult to follow in places.  Not that I could follow them easily anyway, since all the aggression had me just a little too 'pumped up' at times to notice.  It happens.

Heath Ledger's Joker comes across as an instrument of pure evil without purpose.  "I'm just a dog chasing cars," he says, "I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one".  There is no origin story for the Joker, since that's territory already covered in Tim Burton's version.  Because the Joker is 'absolute' evil, there's a certain thematic logic to him not having any past.  He simply is, therefore he always was.  Throughout the movie we are teased with conflicting accounts as to how he got his facial scars (btw, we never actually see him cut anybody's mouth open, kids.  You can uncover your eyes; it's perfectly safe).

Special mention should go to Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, who gets the real character arc for this film.  We've already seen this guy in past movies played by both Billie Dee Williams and Tommy Lee Jones… and I was more than a little concerned about him.  It seems to me the villains, especially the more 'colorful' ones, would pose the most difficult challenge for a reimagined series such as this.  But if Harvey Dent is any real indicator, then we're in good hands.  I was thoroughly convinced.

Nolan's interpretation of Batman himself is familiar to us by now.  I don't think any other Batman to date has ever come this close to earning the title of the Dark Knight.  Despite his moral code against using a gun or seeking vengeance, you can't help thinking of him as a bad cop who gets maybe a little too much pleasure out of roughing up his scum.  It's the reason most of us love him (not to mention that rumbling voice he uses while under the mask).  Good news is, Christian Bale gets to crank it up a couple more notches in this chapter.  Whether it's true that Batman 'completes' the Joker, the Joker certainly completes Batman.

An interesting decision is made regarding the Batman, possibly in attempt to steer him off his traditional story arc and keep him forever grounded as the 'vigilante' hero.  For though the Bat-signal is common knowledge, Batman's cooperation with the Gotham Police remains something of an open secret (official policy is still to arrest the Batman on sight… although I'm not sure how that works exactly with him being allowed to interrogate the Joker).  In the face of public outcry that the Batman take off his mask -per the Joker's demands- he is advised by Alfred that he must not give in even though the people may 'hate' him for it.

The ongoing theme of The Dark Knight is what I like to call 'the audacity of hopelessness'.  As the Joker takes delight in forcing our heroes to make impossible decisions, we get treated to such philosophical meanderings as "you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain".  What kind of cynical morality is this?  Well for one, I imagine it 'speaks' for two-and-a-half generations of Americans who have been lied to.  There is a kind of hungry satisfaction in seeing egoism win out over righteousness, if only temporarily.  Why shouldn't Batman choose his girlfriend's well being over that of the district attorney, and who would you be to tell him otherwise?  Why wouldn't a person who has loved and lost, decide that justice has forsaken the world?  And if you could decide which boat would sink, would you not defy anyone to judge you for not choosing your own?

If the moment when you stop to ask yourself these questions is when damnation occurs, then perhaps there's something to be said for welcoming it.  Shame mutates into defiance, which then hardens into pride.  And in the moment when the Joker handed the fates of Gotham's citizens to each other, I knew how my 'darker side' wanted their stand-off to resolve.  I was however pleasantly surprised by the outcome (it was quite unexpected, and almost everyone in the audience clapped), but at the same time I just couldn't buy it.  Perhaps the supposed self-sacrificing nature of most humans is just too inconvenient a truth for someone like me, who doubts that he has any such instincts, to accept.

I also have to say, nowhere does movie dialogue seem more 'forced' to me than when it comes from the mouths of people in an angry mob.

As the story resolves, events are set in motion which would seem to restrict possibilities for future installments.  Lies are told that can not easily be taken back.  And I wonder if Nolan has a plan for continuing the series, or if this might actually be it as far as he's concerned.

That WB will make more sequels with or without him, I have no doubt.  But one gets the impression of things having come full circle, that the story could end here.  The tone of the film's ending reminded me of James Cameron's 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day', another 'comic book' type of movie (at least in my mind) that left plenty of room open for sequels (which we eventually got), yet still seemed intended as the final statement of a franchise.

If Nolan can think of more to say regarding Batman, then we can expect more episodes directed by him.  If not, then hopefully whoever succeeds him will be confident enough to infuse his own interpretation into the mythos… rather than trying to photocopy Nolan's work.

Skip the first movie if you haven't seen it.  You can always come back to it later.

'Hellboy II:  The Golden Army', like is predecessor, is directed by Guillermo Del Toro of 'Pan's Labyrinth' fame.  Be keeping your eyes on this guy, kids.  He's been hired to direct both of the upcoming 'Hobbit' movies (Peter Jackson will produce).

And if you're really masochistic, you might just check out 'Pan's Labyrinth'.  I saw it in theater, loved it, but flat-out refuse to subject myself to it ever again.

Hellboy is a fairly 'new' character, created by Mike Mignola for Dark Horse Comics, and played by Ron Perlman in both movies.  He is, literally, a devil.  He smokes cigars, chows down six meals a day, loves Baby Ruth bars, has a soft spot for cats, and doesn't get along well with authority.  He keeps his horns filed down to mere stumps because his heritage embarrasses him.

Among his companions are Abe 'fish stick' Sapien, a blue aquatic creature who looks like C-3PO and possesses certain psychic abilities.  Then there's his live-in girlfriend Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), who… well, see the movie.  I will say that she's totally hot.  And how 'Hellboy II' handles the re-introduction of her character, is the main reason I want you to start here if you didn't see the first movie.

They work for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, one of the FBI's secret pet projects.  As professor Trevor Broom (John Hurt) described them in the first film, "There are things that go bump in the night.  And we are the ones who bump back".

Their new leader is Johan Krauss (voiced by Seth MacFarlane), an ectoplasmic cloud-like creature, with a German accent, contained in a transparent 'Dark Helmet'-type suit (seriously, you could squeeze Rick Moranis in there no problem).

Discarding your traditional comic book villains (we had Nazi occultists in the first movie), this sequel chooses instead to venture into the realm of folklore, with various mythical creatures (elves, goblins, trolls) waging war against mankind.  Hellboy fights for the humans, but not without coming to question his allegiance.

The ancient warfare between elf and human is told to us (and a much 'younger' version of Hellboy) as a bedtime story complete with popsicle-stick figures.  Eventually a truce was called:  humans could keep the cities, and the mystical creatures got the forests.  Which worked out pretty well, until the humans started building "parking lots and shopping malls."  I swear I'm not making this up.

Fast-forward to the present, when Prince Nuada (Luke Gross, with an ugly horizontal line across his nose) plots to awaken a dreadful army of "seventy times seventy" indestructible clockwork soldiers, with which to vanquish humanity.  His twin sister Nuala (Anna Walton, with that same line dividing her face and far too much makeup) opposes.  Like the Evil Twin Brothers of G.I. Joe (never seen it), each of the elf siblings suffers the other's injuries.

The plight of the elves in this movie, for some reason, makes me think of bin Laden and his goons.  Obviously the humans have no recollection whatsoever that these creatures exist, at all.  There's nothing like being at war -and not even knowing it- because an unknown people have just sort of arbitrarily decided one day that they hate you.  Someone was once quoted saying about al-Qaeda, "They hate us because we don't even know why they hate us."  It is also said that the one thing haters truly 'hate' is being ignored.  From a purely egotistical standpoint, I hope it's true.

Nuada unleashes a wide assortment of creatures into the human world for various means, in addition to the Golden Army itself.  First and foremost are the trolls, who seem vile enough in their own right (one of them is a digusting old lady who swallows kittens whole, much to HB's disapproval).  Then there are the tooth fairies… I kid you not.  These feed off the teeth and bones of helpless people, and then (presumably) defecate all over their gooey remains.  You don't want them in your house.

Most mysterious of all though, is the gigantic octopus-like Elemental… a forest god with shrubs and grass for hair.  A truly magnificent creature, the Elemental seems almost like something borrowed from one of Hayao Miyazaki's animated pictures.  Perhaps it's a distant cousin to the deer-faced Nightwalker from 'Princess Mononoke'.  The monster bleeds green moss when wounded, and even Hellboy -of all people- seems reluctant to kill it.  Nuada of course pleads for its life as being "the last of its kind"… leaving me to wonder why he was stupid enough to summon the thing to battle in the first place.

Hellboy's internal conflict is that he knows the humans will never fully accept him, no matter what.  For a comic book hero, this is hardly an original theme.  I also seriously doubt that a mob of people would take to throwing rocks at the guy (and just because he's a devil and all) after he's gone through such trouble to save somebody's baby from that Elemental.  That Prince Nuada might actually have some degree of righteousness on his side (given the environmental themes that seem to be in play here), is something the movie thankfully never stops to concern itself with.

For Abe 'fish-stick' Sapien, who believes he has finally found his soul mate in the psychic elf princess Nuala, 'Hellboy II' represents a love story of sorts.  HB meanwhile is having his own relationship problems with Liz… being that he never picks up after himself and there's too many cats in their living space.  In probably the most outrageous moment this movie has to offer, we get this completely unexpected, drunken duet with Hellboy and Fish Stick singing to Barry Manilow ('I Can't Smile Without You').

Can you really get away with this in a comic book movie?  Nevermind.  Because now here's a scary thought:  somewhere in the world at that very moment, every superhero we have ever met (Batman, Superman, Iron Man, Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine, etc) is probably singing that very song.  We can add 'Unbreakable' Bruce Willis to the chorus while we're at it.  And perhaps even Farscape's six-armed Pilot.  Anyone who's ever been lonely and a freak.

When HB and Fish Stick are not singing, they are sharing Deep Meaningful Thoughts such as:  why women say they're angry at one thing when it's really something else... or why they get even more angry that you had to ask why they were angry in the first place (For HB accurately senses that it's not just the cats that are bothering his girlfriend.  It's never 'just' the cats, or 'just' anything).

This would seem very 'deep' and all, if director Guillermo Del Toro felt inclined to share the real answer with us guys in the audience… but obviously he himself doesn't know.  In typical movie fashion, HB and Liz seem to get over their problems without ever dealing with them.  Although to be fair, you couldn't seriously expect Hellboy to get rid of the cats.

If I have one complaint about 'Hellboy II', it is that I didn't like the younger boy who played him in the beginning.  He's not bad, I just found him annoying.  What's worse, I kept seeing the young boy's expressions on 'older' Hellboy's face throughout the movie –which I found to be rather bothersome, as Hellboy now seemed to me like an overgrown kid.  "Well that means the kid worked, right?  He was obviously able to channel Ron Perlman's performance."  Or, maybe it was actually the other way around.  Just to offer another way of looking at it.

Overall, I'd say if 2004's 'Hellboy' was just a notch below the first 'Spider-Man', than this was one above it.  It's no 'Iron Man', but I still enjoyed it way better than last month's 'Hulk'.  'Batman Begins' and 'Spider-Man 2' remain untouchable… at least for now.  I'm dragging my dad to see 'The Dark Knight' when he gets in later today.

Later,
Sam

So I finally caught 'The Incredible Hulk' today at the Palms. 

Movie trailers included 'Clone Wars' (which is actually a TV pilot), 'The Mummy 3', 'Hellboy 2', 'X-Files', 'The Spirit' and some dumb-looking Will Smith comic movie.  The Mummy films I've never seen, although I fell asleep during the mindless action of 'Van Helsing' (same director).  X-Files has more mythology than I will ever catch up with at this point.  Clone Wars trailer didn't really impress, however I'm still curious.  Hellboy looks like real fun.  And the Spirit, whatever the heck that is, has definitely caught my attention.

My familiarity with the Hulk is limited to the 1990 TV-movie 'Death of the Incredible Hulk', which I watched with my uncle Frank during a school break that year.  And that's really it.  I may have seen the TV series intro a couple times but never stuck around to watch.  I know I was curious to see the Ang Lee interpretation (for I quite enjoyed 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'), but everyone told me "it sucked" so I steered clear.

This movie represents an interesting chapter for Marvel Entertainment.  I have to be honest here: I've not been impressed with the majority of movies based on their superheroes, assuming I even bothered to see them at all.  'Spider-Man' has been their only real success prior to this year, and mostly by virtue of the second film (third one was a huge disappointment, though still fun in a guilty sort of way).  I realize the 'X-Men' are very popular, but to me the jury is still out as to how much replay value you can get out of them.  'The Incredible Hulk' is second in a new line of 'independent' films Marvel has started putting out ('Iron Man' was the first).  It should be interesting to see what else will come out of this venture... assuming there are any Marvel superheroes left that haven't been sold to the other major Hollywood studios.

'Hulk' also has the thankless task of dealing with the existence of its previous lackluster theatrical incarnation.  Originally conceived as a 'loose' sequel of sorts, the story was largely re-written by Edward Norton when he was cast as Bruce Banner.  The film is now said to be 'closer' in tone to the TV series, and does not connect to the Ang Lee version in any way.  In technical terms this is a reboot, as its continuity has been completely reset.  Since an 'origin story' was already done for the last movie, director Louis Leterrier chooses to not bother with one here.  Instead we get 'flashes' of the Hulk's background during the opening titles, clearly establishing the 2003 movie (for anyone who saw it) as noncanon.

We catch up with Banner in Rio, Brazil, where he appears to be hiding out with his dog in the slums of the city.  His neighborhood is so densely populated you can't even see the mountainside underneath layers of houses stacked on top of each other.  It is a haunting site, beautiful and terribly wrong.  If a landslide happened underneath these people, they wouldn't know it until their whole village caved in.  Yes, the image really does deserve its own paragraph in describing.

Banner occupies himself with taking meditative anger management lessons and making his living at a bottling factory.  During a workplace injury some of his blood drips into one of the sodas (a sickly-yellow carbonated drink with some made-up brand name that made me think of either Kick -remember them?- or Jolt).  Some unlucky beverage drinker in the U.S. (played by Stan Lee himself) is poisoned as a result, and word of it attracts military general Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross (William Hurt, rendered completely unrecognizable with his mustache and cigar).  Ross sends a team to Brazil to capture Banner.  The fate of the poisoned Kick drinker, meanwhile, is never mentioned.  Kinda makes you not want to drink bottled beverages, doesn't it?

Ross wants to experiment on Banner with the hopes that the military can create an entire army of Hulks.  I'm just trying to think if there's anybody in this world I hate strongly enough to nominate as their drill sergeant.

The military team is led by Russian-born British special ops Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), who establishes himself as Banner's nemesis when he shoots his dog (like the Kick drinker, the poor pooch is quickly forgotten about).  Banner manages to elude Blonsky's thugs, only to be chased and captured by some random punks he accidentally bumped into while he was running.  I get the impression this is 'typical' Hulk formula set-up.  Banner's Portuguese sucks:  "Please don't make me hungry.  You wouldn't like me when I'm hungry."  (I guess I can relate; I've been told I'm not exactly nice when I'm hungry either).  Blonsky catches up and watches his team get trashed.

I remember after seeing 'Iron Man', I complained that his nemesis lacked sufficient motivation to be the one fighting in a battlesuit against Tony Stark.  Regretfully, Blonsky is even guiltier in this respect.  Here's an opponent who seems mildly interesting when we first meet him, but upon surviving his first encounter with the Hulk devolves into a villain obsessed with merely obtaining Banner's power.  It is therefore no spoiler at all to reveal that he's the guy Hulk is destined to duke it out with in the end (he becomes 'an abomination', which I take for meaning as referring to 'The' Abomination).  He has no personal stake in what's happening, nothing to contribute to society (or more importantly, to this story), and therefore no reason to even exist.

Rounding out the cast is love interest Betty Ross (daughter of General Ross, played by Liv Tyler who I absolutely cannot stand... great, now that damn Aerosmith power-ballad is stuck inside my head).  Personally, I find it most bothersome when fragile-looking female characters get all teary-eyed over Big Dumb Ape Boyfriends.  I wasn't fond of it in Beauty and the Beast, I couldn't stand it in Peter Jackson's 'King Kong', and I don't care much for it here.  It just seems somehow wrong, the whole cliche of the damsel seeing the monster's 'sensitive side' or whatever.

In one scene, Banner passes on his chance to have sex with Liv Tyler because he fears he might turn into the Hulk if he gets too excited.  Liv's character meanwhile seems strangely turned on by the idea.  But now hold that thought for a moment while I describe the Hulk for you:

The 'analog' days of Lou Ferrigno playing the Hulk are long over.  And although he's not as rubbery as his 2003 incarnation, Hulk is still portrayed as an impossibly huge computer-generated monstrosity.  He does not suffer from the same lack of texture as Gollum or CG Yoda (that annoying almost-slightly-out-of-focus look), however there is a 'watery' presence to him -almost like the ill-fated senator from the first X-Men movie- that is most noticeable whenever he transforms.  One critic felt inspired to call him a "dark, shiny muscular pickle".  By far the goriest aspect of the final fight between Hulk and the Abomination, was that I kept expecting one of them to burst open like a water balloon.

There is a cameo appearance by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) in what was perhaps the most rewarding moment in the movie -even though it had nothing to do with the rest of the story and just felt sort of tacked on.  Personally I find it difficult to accept that these two stories can occupy the same fictional universe.  'Iron Man' had this rather nice low-key cinematic style to it (say, when does the new Batman come out again?), whereas the Hulk by his very nature flourishes in excess ("Hulk... Smash!!").  But something is clearly happening that links these two mythologies, and so far it's going completely over my head.  (I still have to see the post-ending to 'Iron Man'... I even stuck around this time to see if there was one for this movie, and there isn't).

From what I've seen here, there's no reason to go back and Netflix the Ang Lee version.  Unless anyone who loved it would care to enlighten me.  The subject line above I shamelessly borrowed from A. O. Scott of the New York Times.  This review has been brought to you by Kick, the hardcore psycho-nitro drink in a can.  Too bad they no longer make the stuff.

Later.

I wonder if the majority of M. Knight Shyamalan's detractors even know why they hate him.  Whether most of them, if asked, could compose their opinions into a persuasive argument as to what makes him an unqualified film director.

Or whether their reasoning basically amounts to:  "Meh...  the movie sucked.  The twist ending sucked.  There was a twist ending, wasn't there?  I know there was, because all his movies have twist endings, because 'The Sixth Sense' had a twist ending.  Therefore it sucked.  He's a one trick pony.  He just does the same thing.  What has he done, anyway?"

Granted, this guy's not the easiest person to defend.  He's egotistical, for one.  And I doubt anyone could argue that his latter films have simply been misunderstood as opposed to flawed (although I do believe you can be flawed and misunderstood).  None of his films really hold up to outside logic.  My dad recently commented that they seem more like feature-length Twilight Zone episodes.  And come to think of it, when has the Zone really held up to logic?

I recently made a point to rent all of Shyamalan's movies through the power of Netflix.  I finally saw 'Unbreakable' for the first time, and liked it (I still have not gotten to 'Lady in the Water', which is said to be his biggest turkey).  I was pleased to discover I enjoyed his movies much more than I remembered, as if they actually improved with each viewing.

There is one exception:  I don't believe 'The Sixth Sense' has aged very well.  The 'ice breath' effects in it are so cheesy-looking I can't believe any of us were ever convinced.  And the less said about the kid's obsessive mother, the better.  It's still the director's strongest movie (unquestionably); it's just no longer my personal favorite.

No, that honor now goes to 'The Village'... even though it's widely regarded as one of his turkeys.  Just because its theme of deception rings true, at least for me, more than any other work he's done.  I also believe it's his most cinematic film to date.

What I like most about Shyamalan is that he's restrained.  If anything in Hollywood is a true rarity, it's a director who's willing to think small.  I recommend not bringing your popcorn with you, so to speak, when watching his films.  And even if the one you see is a total flop (which 'The Village' sort of was), you're at least guaranteed to take something out of it... though you might not be able to articulate exactly what.

So with my rediscovered admiration for the director, I was working myself up to defending him yet again after seeing his latest movie 'The happening'.  Sadly, he has just made that task a lot more problematic.  This is his weakest film I've seen so far.

Not 'bad' weak mind you, in fact I could still give it a conditional recommendation.  But it definitely does not approach anything else he's done (although 'Lady in the Water' could still prove me wrong on this point).

The Happening refers to an unexplained wave of mass suicides, which begins one morning in Central Park and quickly spreads across the entire northeast.  People become disoriented, then suddenly start looking for the quickest means of killing themselves.  At first it is believed to be the result of a bio-terrorist attack, and people take to fleeing their cities for the country.  Which turns out to be a mistake, since the menace may be ecological in nature.

I want to say at this point that the trailers really had me thinking the film would involve flying zombies.  Not that I would normally go see a 'zombie' picture, of all things.  For one, zombies are incredibly... well, stupid.  But it's a moot point anyway, since there are no zombies blowing in the wind here.  Only construction workers jumping off from a building to their deaths.  That's all.  Nothing important.

The main characters?  Oh, right... them.  Well you have the science professor Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg), his wife Alma (Zoey Deschanel), their friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez).  To me these characters/actors didn't leave any impression at all, negative or positive.  Husband and wife are having marital problems, but the reason for their lack of communication is so laughable I don't even know why they wrote it in. Since characters have always come first in Shyamalan's stories (another reason I like his work), I am really at a loss to understand what happened here.

What these people flee is in the wind, and indeed the sight of tree branches blowing does become a tangible threat.  The film manages to be scary at times, though probably nothing along the order of 'The Sixth Sense'.  Much has been said about this being Shyamalan's most 'bloody' picture, as well as his first to receive an R rating.  Me, I'm not buying it.  There is blood, to be sure... but thankfully never in the kind of rapid close-up shots Hollywood has conditioned us to expect.

One often-cited complaint regarding 'The Happening' is that we don't really see society breaking down during all of this (the rioting, mass hysteria, what-not).  As I know a lot of people find such scenes in movies to be superfluous, I would think they'd be relieved to not see that here.  Surely Shyamalan's earlier film 'Signs' (in which nothing less than a global alien invasion is witnessed from a single rural community) should have given us a better idea of what to expect.  Maybe people are less likely to trample each other if they don't quite know what they're running from.

The story's biggest flaw is that it's never clear just how widespread this event is, since we didn't get the impression there are long-lasting 'gaps' in society as a result of life being lost.  In this respect, this film fails to hold up to outside logic (see, this really is an M. Night Shyamalan film we're talking about).

Without giving any real spoilers, there was a moment where I thought to myself "No way!  He's not going to give us a 'love conquers all' resolution."  And technically I suppose he didn't.  Although that hasn't stopped some critics from having a field day with it, and I can't say as I blame them.  I also couldn't identify anything resembling a 'twist' ending this time, although I'm sure if you grabbed enough straws you could spin out something.

'The Happening' is an environmental fable, and it was on that level that I related to it the most.  The event itself signifies a warning of sorts.  But is it a fair warning?  Would the 'happening' allow people in this fictional world time to demonstrate they were listening before it decided to re-manifest?  Somehow, I doubt nature really gives a damn whether it has allowed us time to help Al Gore push some kind of aggressive 30-year plan through Congress.

Implausible as the pseudo-science of 'The Happening' sounds, I found it to be a sufficiently disturbing parable of how the world could end.

The subject line above is actually spoken by Mel Gibson in 'Signs'.  Seemed appropriate.

Take care y'all,
Sam

When I finally saw 'The Golden Compass' in January of this year, I knew I had at least a few things to say about it.  But after a while it just seemed like the proverbial statute of limitations for writing about the movie had expired (its early disappearance from theaters may have had something to do with that).

And so I resolved to discuss the movie instead when 'Narnia - Prince Caspian' came out last month... knowing that at least a few of my friends would flat-out refuse to see anything Christianity-related and could probably use a nice 'alternative' recommendation.  But still I let time pass... and it's probably fair to say that the proverbial statute of limitations is once again expired.

So in the end, it came down to this:  Much as I enjoyed 'Prince Caspian', and hope to see it again if I have the time, I just don't feel quite right allowing discussion of a religiously-themed movie to take up bandwidth on my personal blog without, you know, there being something else to sort of counter it.

'The Golden Compass' stars Nichole Kidman, Daniel Craig and Eva Green (all of whom came to this project from six degrees of each other, provided they are listed in that order), along with newly-discovered Dakota Blue Richards, whom I'm thinking people may just want to keep their eyes on in the future.

More significantly, 'Compass' is a modest fantasy film that exists both as an equal and opposite to the 'Narnia' installments.  For all of its similarities with the latter (what with being set in a bright, colorful magical 'otherworld' populated by children and talking animals), it is actually a film about the right to not believe in god or the church.

The movie is based off the trilogy His Dark Materials by British author Philip Pullman, and represents an attempt by New Line Cinema to replicate their own success with the 'Lord of the Rings' movies.  But while the film did very well with the international box office, it underperformed here in the US, leaving the likely adaptation of the two remaining novels very much in question.

If nothing else, 'The Golden Compass' is an interesting movie to check out and see what might have become of the 'Lord of the Rings' project under less fortunate circumstances.

The setting is a world geographically similar to our own... and as we are told, just one of many (possibly infinite) such worlds.  In this world, human spirits/souls/whatever manifest themselves physically as furry little animal creatures called daemons.  All worlds are linked by a cosmic substance known as Dust, the very acknowledgement of which is forbidden by the mysterious Magisterium.  When a person dies, his daemon dissolves to Dust.

For all attempts at 'diluting' this cinematic adaptation for Western audiences, it is fairly obvious who/what exactly this Magisterium is intended to remind people of.  They wear formally decorated robes, work out of cathedrals, dictate morality, and consistently condemn all teachings counter to their own as heresy.  They even abduct children in secret (mostly boys, from what I saw).  And those few of the Magisterium willing to entertain the possibility of other worlds, seem confident in the belief that their authority (somehow) already touches said worlds... including, presumably, our own.

The main character is Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Richards), an orphan at Jordan College, who spends most of her time trying to get into trouble.  As the movie begins she somewhat thanklessly thwarts an assassination attempt on her uncle Lord Asriel (Craig) by the Magisterium.  Right away it becomes apparent that almost every adult character in sight, whether representing this Magisterium or not, seems overbearingly strict.  Not since the original 'Star Wars' have I seen a fantasy world that is so deliciously skeptical towards parental authority.

Anyway, Asriel gathers together the funding to make another trip up north to prove the existence of Dust, leaving Lyra behind to mope with her daemon Pan (a ferret, who can sometimes assume other forms because Lyra's own personality still has not 'settled' yet).  Enter Mrs. Coulter, whose very presence causes heads to turn (I'd guess this is who Kidman is supposed to play, wouldn't you?).  She invites Lyra to travel with her, much to the school master's objection.  Before they leave, the master entrusts Lyra with the last remaining alethiometer, a 'golden compass' believed to answer any question asked of it by an intuitive user (apparently intuition is in short supply in this world, since she's somehow destined to have this thing).

Lyra and Pan become suspicious of Mrs. Coulter when they learn two of their friends back home have been kidnapped by the Magisterium.  They escape, and find themselves rescued by the sea-traveling Gyptians, who seek the whereabouts of their own missing children.

Employing the help of aeronaut Lee Scoresby (Sam Elliott) and the exiled polar bear Iorek Byrnison (voiced by none other than Sir Ian McKellen), the party travels north across the hostile lands of the savage Samoyeds, and the kingdom of the polar bears, to learn what dark fate has befallen the missing children.  And if you are like, "huh?", by this point in the story, then you are most definitely not alone.

It is difficult to understand why this movie doesn't quite work -and make no mistake, it is a flawed movie.  As a genre film and literary adaptation, I find myself wanting to compare it with David Lynch's interpretation of Dune (though obviously 'The Golden Compass' is intended as a 'family' type movie, whereas 'Dune' clearly wasn't).  In both cases someone went through the trouble to assemble a highly talented and experienced cast and crew, only to put together a movie that was perhaps too ambitious and 'talky' for its own good.

If I was to guess where the biggest blunder occurred, I would say it was in the studio's decision to trim the script itself to a length of under two hours in order to maximize revenue.  Cramming so much action and information into such a tight movie that the characters really don't get a chance to become defined as people we want to invest in.  One thing this movie is not, is engaging.  Most of the information seems contrived or forced, and you know you're in trouble when a 12-year-old girl appears more able than yourself to sort through what the heck is going on (The story is actually not as complicated as critics make it out to be; I think it just moves faster than it should.  Most of the Harry Potter films actually demand more attention than this).

There is also very little sense of danger throughout the movie, a complaint which I've unfortunately had with both of the 'Narnia' installments as well.

Some events from Pullman's first novel are shifted around, from what I understand.  The last three chapters have been saved for to the 'next' movie, so as to not end this one on a cliffhanger.  Also, Lyra's visit to the 'bear kingdom' seems rather superfluous, possibly because it wasn't supposed to happen until after the battle that now serves as the film's climax.  It seems I need to read the books.

That we're not getting a full story here is perhaps most evident in the casting of Christopher Lee, for a single cameo appearance that serves no real purpose besides showing the Magisterium arguing amongst themselves.  One can only assume he will become somebody important in some future chapter.  As it stands, Nichole Kidman provides the only recurring face for the Magisterium, though her character seems more conflicted than evil.

Visually, 'The Golden Compass' is quite a wonder to behold.  It is not 'Lord of the Rings' level cinematography, but it's about as close as you can reasonably get to it for a 'genre' film that isn't 'Lord of the Rings'.  It's a beautiful, scenic 19th-century otherworld that seems very familiar, yet features some of the coolest looking retro-futuristic hardware I've ever seen (Jules Verne would be proud).  Not to mention, this is about as convincing as talking computer-generated animals are likely to get in the near future.  Two polar bears fighting over succession to the throne, is not exactly something to be missed.

And Dakota Blue Richards?  Is damn cute... in a good way.  Just don't turn me over to the police for saying so.  She pretty much steals the movie, even working next to Nichole Kidman.  Some occasionally weak dialogue notwithstanding, I think she has a real future here.

It's a flawed movie, there's no getting around that.  But I'll dare say, I like it better than the last four Star Wars movies, or the first Harry Potter for that matter.  I'll also never understand why critics rated 2005's 'Narnia' above this (the same critics, it seems, who just recently turned around and slammed the second installment.  There's obviously a difference of opinion here).

'The Golden Compass' is rated PG-13 for "sequences of fantasy violence", whatever the heck that means.  The polar bear fight is rather brutal, but there is really no blood that I can recall (only Dust).  Lyra 'clobbers' someone with a rifle at one point; that is about as much violence as the filmmakers felt an innocent 12-year-old heroine should get away with in a story like this.

Now that's more like it.

I finally got to see 'Prince Caspian', the second chapter in the Narnia film series, last Saturday at the Palms.  And as anticipated, this sequel is a major cinematic improvement over the Sunday school play that was 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'.

I need to rant here first.  I have a real love/hate relationship with the Narnia films.  And by extension, the C.S. Lewis books I either dimly remember reading twenty years ago or have not read at all.

On one hand I love visiting other worlds, and am usually up for a new, well-crafted fantasy epic... even if it can't always be the Lord of the Rings.

But what I don't care for, is when the mythology, rules and even magic of an otherworld seem somehow arbitrarily constructed around a morality that I either don't understand or choose not to acknowledge.

In the world of Narnia, you are presented with a simple choice:  Aslan or the White Witch.  Choose Aslan, and you get to prove your devotion to Him by placing yourself in harm's way to fight for His kingdom.  His arbitrary "magic" may protect you from any real harm -since you've chosen to walk in the light, as it were- but there's no reason you would be assured of this upfront, since true "faith" never comes in actually knowing.

Choose the Witch, and she will happily respect your individualism (for she is an individualist herself), while offering you Turkish Delight.  She will of course expect a favor in return... but again there is no reason you would know this upfront.

Honestly, which would you choose under these terms, without the benefit of hindsight?  Myself, I'm curious if this Turkish Delight tastes anything like fruitcake.  Which is why I'd probably make a terrible Christian.

'Narnia' doesn't quite hold up next to the likes of 'Harry Potter' or 'Lord of the Rings' because, at least in my opinion, it feels more like the kind of "safe" fantasy adventure your grandparents might pick out for you.  The Pevensie children in particular remind me of how my paternal step-grandfather (a real family patriarch of the self-proclaimed variety) seemed to expect young people to behave.  The "good" animals -soft and plushy- appear intended to keep you young, innocent and distracted for as long as possible, while the seductive (but never sensual) White Witch seems just the kind of woman your mother might hope would leave you scarred with lingering second thoughts about wanting to discover the opposite sex.

Somehow you're expected to recognize both Aslan and the Witch for who they represent (they make it seem so easy even a child could figure it out), and ignorance is never accepted as an excuse ("He betrayed them, your majesty").  Betraying Aslan himself leaves the Witch with a rightful claim to your body (or soul?), by way of some bogus mumbo-jumbo treaty that I can't picture anyone being fool enough to sign.  And if the Witch understood the "true" meaning of sacrifice, she would have interpreted the Deep Magic differently... in that no real sacrifice was ever more than implied in the first place.

Herein lies perhaps the single most bothersome aspect of Narnia, for all of its mostly harmless attempts at Christian allegory.  Being that there is indeed no great sacrifice called upon its characters, and no evidence of actual danger since nobody ever appears to get hurt.  To be appointed (anointed?) King or Queen of Narnia seems as simple a matter as getting a chance to hug Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, and apparently demands little more in the way of responsibility.  With no objections raised if you and your siblings one day forsake your loyal subjects and disappear back into the wardrobe, never to be seen again for thirteen hundred years.

Which... is exactly where this second installment picks up.  And though I have not bothered to write an actual "previously on Narnia" recap, it is my intention that any newbie who's read the above paragraphs, and feels so inclined, should be able to just skip right into the second movie.  You're welcome.

So... 1300 years later.  In that time both Disney and Walden Media have come up with new production cards for their films.  We cut to a not-very-attractive woman giving violent birth (that oughtta scare the younger tykes) to the wrongful heir to the throne of Narnia.  Cinematography does not seem to regard the moment as a joyous occasion, and older cousin Prince Caspian X -rightful heir to the throne- seems inclined to agree.  Since this means his head is now scheduled to come off of its neck.

If they were looking for an intro to rival the spectacle of German bombs being dropped on London, I think they found it.  Caspian (Ben Barnes) jumps onto his horse and flees, with the palace guards in hot pursuit, and as the opening titles come up we get the usual assortment of obligatory wide-angle nighttime scenic shots.  Unremarkable, except that this is just the kind of cinematography we did not see in the first movie.  The director has just made a promise to us that the story will have much better visual scope this time around.

We don't get much of a reintroduction to the Pevensie children, at all, before they are called back into Narnia.  This time via subway.  Peter is more arrogant, Edmund has matured since his humbling experience in the last movie, Susan and Lucy are simply... older.  Only one year had passed for them back in London.

What they find upon returning, is that the palace where they one ruled as kings and queens has decayed into ruins.  A people known as the Telmarine long ago invaded Narnia and drove the talking animals into the forests, where many of them have reverted back into wild beasts.

The children rescue a rather grumpy dwarf named Trumpkin (Peter Dinklage) from a couple Telmarine soldiers, and the five of them make their way to the Stone Table, where Aslan was "executed" in the first film.  There the last of the exiled Narnians have assembled, including the swashbuckling mouse Reepicheep (whom I have just now remembered from one of the books, after looking up his name).  Prince Caspian has petitioned for their help in retaking the throne from his uncle Miraz (Sergio Castellitto), promising in return to establish peace between the Narnians and Telmarine.

This is definitely a darker, less flashy version of Narnia that we're seeing.  We've moved away from the bright, shiny colors of the first film in favor of a world that is more medieval in appearance.  The animals are scruffier-looking, although the centaurs still look damn goofy.  The villains are human this time (the Witch does get a cameo however), which in itself makes the fantasy seem more realistic.

I'm not even sure "villains" accurately describes Miraz and his minions.  If anything, their behavior is about what I'd expect from people in a monarchy.  I guess according the C.S. Lewis' moral compass, they are forsaken in the sense that they've looked into the face of salvation (Aslan) and still refused to yield.  But being agnostic as I am, I would hardly consider them at all evil in the traditional sense of the word.  Ethically bankrupt, sure.

Director Andrew Adamson also makes the interesting choice here to design (and cast) the Telmarine as being Spanish.  I will say that I had great difficulty following most of the intrigue among Miraz's soldiers because of the thick Spanish accents.

Aslan still looks very computer-generated, more so than I remember from the first movie.  Something about him lacks physical texture, at least on a projected screen.  Whereas Reepicheep seemed rather convincing, which is really saying a lot for a swashbuckler who can only stab people in the feet.  For being less than a third the size of computer-generated Yoda, he sure looked a lot less ridiculous waving his sword around.

The Christian themes are thankfully more restrained this time, since they already "did" the Last Supper thing in the previous chapter.  Hubris seems to be the main theme of 'Prince Caspian', based on most critical analyses I've read.  I confess I didn't really pick up on this myself.  It's also my understanding that Peter's own hubris -born partly out of his difficulty adapting to the real world after being a king in Narnia for X many years- actually represents a departure from the book.

-----potential spoilers-----

Mostly what I noticed was the whole issue of faith regarding Aslan's unexplained absence throughout most of the film.  Lucy insists she can see Him, but only Edmund seems willing to believe... with everyone else having to reconcile their faith in Him against their more immediate need to liberate Narnia after 1300 years of neglect.  An attempt to invade Miraz's castle (also reportedly not in the book), born either out of hubris or possibly the notion that Maybe Aslan Helps Those Who Help Themselves, ends disastrously:  with the Narnians now facing an imminent counterattack on their lair for which they were not prepared.

So the real lesson then is one of humility and faith (oh, well... silly me, then).  I could probably have lived without Aslan roaring in my face:  "Do you see me now?!!"  I don't think you should be allowed to say that after neglecting your subjects for thirteen hundred years, but whatever.

Finally, there were a couple elements that would seem borrowed from straight out of Tolkein, if not for the fact that Prince Caspian actually predates Rings by at least three years.  Aslan summons a "river god" whose theatrical appearance strongly resembles that of the White Riders created by Gandalf (or Arwen, depending on who you ask) during Frodo's flight to the ford.  The similarity of visual effects here probably couldn't be helped.  Also the trees of Narnia come alive and wreck plenty of havok.  I think maybe there was something else, but I can't remember.

So now I'm wondering if the next film is one of the books I read.  Hopefully the actress playing Lucy will be well into her teens, since I believe whatever book I'm thinking of calls for her and Edmund to appear older (seeing the first movie, I initially mistook the two of them for Susan and Peter).  There's also another character who travels with them, and (like younger Edmund) suffers some great humiliation before becoming "enlightened" or whetever (I think he becomes a dragon or something?).  The mouse is definitely familiar...

Later.

Hey dudes.  I'm thinking I'll be posting my so-called film reviews here from now on rather than emailing them out -although I suppose I could still do that to.  (Those of you who don't know me:  I'm Sam, I love movies, I'm a fairly liberal guy most of the time, but sometimes get extremely bored with being politically correct, nice to meet you, and welcome.  There.)

So I finally saw 'Iron Man' Monday, after getting too sidetracked to make it over the weekend.  Went to the Brendan Palms, which is about the only place to catch a movie when you have to go in to work later.

Movie trailers included:   Narnia - Prince Caspian, Batman - The Dark Knight, Speed Racer, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones, and a bunch of lame slapstick comedies.  Prince Caspian seems more 'epic' than the Sunday school play that was the first movie.  Batman, I was already there.  Speed Racer looks like car sex for the prepubescent crowd (now that's a scary thought).  Hulk, I couldn't tell the difference from trailers of the 2003 installment that everyone claims sucked.  And I'm finally warming up to the idea of another Indiana Jones (so yes, I will be there to report back... now why couldn't Spielberg direct the Star Wars prequels?).

I'm also starting to appreciate the Pepsi 'WAKE UP, people!!' ads, as I was beginning to nod off there for a second.

'Iron Man' I think I first became aware of by accident after seeing 'Transformers' last summer.  Maybe a friend mentioned it, and I said something like "Iron Man... you mean that untitled 'mystery trailer' everyone's talking about?"  In my defense, the roar of the 'Cloverfield' monster sounded an awful lot like the intro to the Black Sabbath song.

Then when I started seeing posters last winter, I said "you're kidding, right?  THAT dorky-looking mask is the main character from the song?"  Scoff if you want, but I think the song would make for one absolutely badass post-apocalyptic movie.  "Ven... geance... from-the-grave, kills-the peo-ple he-once saved!!"  (Oh come on... you cannot tell me you wouldn't want to see that.)

However, that's not the movie we're watching today (although we DO get a kick-ass heavy metal soundtrack with some Black Sabbath in it... see trailer).  Apparently there actually was an Iron Man superhero published by Marvel Comics.  And since this is a comic we're talking about, I'll be the last to know if any plot twist constitutes an actual spoiler (you've been warned).

Story begins in Afghanistan, of all places, where multi-millionaire weapons manufacturer and war profiteer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is demonstrating the destructive potential of a new cluster bomb his company has invented.

Right away, this man strikes you as a real Howard Hughes type.  He's arrogant, impulsive... truth be told he's really kind of an asshole, of the drinking and womanizing variety.  He also demonstrates a certain flare for theatrics: spreading his arms wide, almost Christ-like, during a missile test as the dust blows on past (I love it).  I dare say, it's impossible to not like him.

Here's a sample of his dialogue, straight from the trailers:

"They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire.  I prefer the weapon you only need to fire once.  That's how Dad did it.  That's how America does it.  And... it's worked out pretty well so far."

Who would ever actually say that?  I love it.  I just love it.

Sooner than we can blink, he is caught in an ambush.  Cinematography gets all 'pretentious war movie' on us as the troops in his caravan are taken out one by one (By about now I'm thinking I came here to see a comic book.  Is this really the right auditorium?  Theater 8, right?).  He is then captured by the Taliban and tortured (waterboarded and hooded).

At least I assumed it was the Taliban, since we are in Afghanistan.  Perhaps I should have called them Generic Angry Muslim Terrorists Who (Still) Have No Idea Why They Hate Us.  Yeah, I like the sound of that better.

Anyway, he gets his 'comeuppance' when he learns the international community regards him as "the most famous mass-murderer in the history of America" (Thank the gods, this is a comic book movie after all).  And now his captors want him to build for them one of his flashy new super-missiles.

Instead, he constructs a bipedal mobile iron battlesuit which he then crawls into and uses to escape.  Our Stock Muslim Terrorists unfortunately come off looking like complete idiots here... but with only two hours to re-tell this story in cinematic form, it probably couldn't be helped.

I should mention that he was heavily wounded at the time of capture, and had to be saved by a doctor (Shaun Toub) who helped him build his toy.  So now he carries a magnet embedded in his chest to prevent the shrapnel in his body from reaching his heart (some of this is rather painful to watch).  Said magnet is charged by the same battery he uses to power his new suit.

Stark returns safely home to his business partner Obadiah Stone (cigar-smoking Jeff Bridges, with shaven head and beard) and girl Friday Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow).  He is now somewhat humbled -though thankfully he never quite sheds his arrogance- and has a new direction in life:  to destroy the weapons that he once created.  Or something.  Anyway, that's as far as I'm going to go with this, since it's already 3am.

So what's to like?

First of all, this could be the most "down to Earth" comic movie ever adapted, what with its gritty cinematic style, low-key (but quite brilliant) special effects, and emphasis on modern-day (pseudo)-politics.  It's the next step up from 'Batman Begins', which surprised the hell out of me in 2005 just by showing its fictional setting allowed for there to be an actual world outside Gotham City.

Second, the characters are all perfectly cast.  Robert Downey as Tony Stark is pure genius, even more so than Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man.

When was the last time we had a forty-plus year old superhero, anyway?  Was it Michael Keaton as Batman?  While Keaton seems to have fallen out of favor among Batfans since the current cycle of movies started, I have always liked the subtle idiosyncrasies of his Bruce Wayne.  Like not being able to set down his wine glass without Alfred having to come to the rescue.  You get a lot of that with Downey, only turned up a couple notches.  He's clumsy but he doesn't care.  He has humility but he's arrogant.  "Let's face it; this is not the worst thing you've caught me doing."

He also has excellent chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow, whom I didn't think I was going to like.  I could never really say the same for Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst, even though they both worked quite well in their respective roles.

The movie is not without its flaws though, and I think ultimately falls a little short of being another 'Spider-Man 2' or 'Batman Begins'.  When you see it, ask yourself these questions:

-----stop here potential spoilers-----

Who is Iron Man's true nemesis in this movie, anyway?  Why him?  What qualifies his character for such a role?  Are his established motives really sufficient?  Is he really a dire, immediate threat to anybody besides Stark himself?  To the world?

A worthy opponent for Iron Man needs a worthy battlesuit to fly in.  When did he find the time to learn how to operate his?

What was with that 'flashback' introduction at the beginning of the film?  Was it just to start the movie off with a bang?  Might it not have flowed better to open with the media clips establishing Stark's character and then proceed in straightforward linear fashion?  Or maybe they tried it that way and it didn't work?  ('Batman Begins' used an awkward flashback structure for its first act as well, although I think in that case it was necessary).

And finally... Is it really okay for a mere comic book story, with its familiar black-and-white morality, to presume to portray a people as complicated and often misunderstood as Muslims... the result being that they must now appear as two-dimensional, cigar-smoking black hat heavies?

On that last, I actually kinda hope it's not okay.  We're in the show business, didn't anybody tell you?  We've got a movie to make, so it's all in good fun.  So there.  Interestingly, my research shows Stark was originally captured by the North Vietnamese (lending an anti-Communist focus to the earliest issues of the comic series; he later changed his worldview to keep in touch with America's changing attitude regarding the war).

Well that's all folks.  Later.