The 3:00 AM Review (Special Procrastination Edition): "Angels & Demons"

[Note: I failed to post this last Friday morning, because I had finished typing it at 4:00 AM, and I was absolutely tired. So here you go. For my first Project Summer post, I hope to type up some thoughts on my first-ever viewing of The Da Vinci Code, which was last Tuesday (the 12th). I also hope to elaborate a bit on how both of the Robert Langdon movies compare to each other. Also, my apologies in advance for the potential incompetency of my review. Like I alluded to above, I wrote this between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM last Friday morning. So make of it what you will.]

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks reunite for their second Robert Langdon screen adventure, following 2006's The Da Vinci Code. But how do they compare? Well, as simply as I can put it, they're wildly different types of movies... but that doesn't make one necessarily better than the other. Da Vinci was primarily about its theories, purported conspiracies, and symbology insights, but the main focus of Angels is action and suspense, as Langdon races across Vatican City and Rome, not only to save kidnapped cardinals targeted for murder, but also to retrieve a canister of dangerous antimatter. It's because of these tasks that the movie proceeds at an unrelenting pace; the majority of the movie takes place during a six-hour period, and Howard displays the current time as often as an episode of 24. Da Vinci had a much more relaxed pace, as it took its time to explain its historical theories; Demons trims down its history lessons and crams them in between action sequences, with walk-and-talks so hectic that you'd think Ron Howard was trying to one-up Aaron Sorkin. Granted, while the pacing of Angels is different than Code, it has the advantage of being a lot more consistent than before; one problem I had with Da Vinci was that it shifted awkwardly between theory and expositional scenes and action beats. (Also markedly different in Demons, compared to Code: the camerawork, which moves around at breakneck speed. Sometimes, I wondered if I was watching Michael Bay's Angels & Demons. ;) ) Along those lines, Howard forgoes many of the more unique (or dare I say, risky) storytelling tricks that he used in Da Vinci in order to generate a more streamlined summer blockbuster, or perhaps even to combat some of the negative critical reception of Code. Gone are the elaborate flashbacks throughout history, which is somewhat understandable, as Angels is a movie about the here-and-now. Also gone is one of my favorite aspects of the first movie: the eye-catching visualizations of Langdon's thought process. While the movie's immediacy may have played a part in its elimination, I thought this aspect was rather unique and mesmerizing, and it still could have been used nicely in this installment. To his credit, though, Howard does handle the movie's locations extremely well, especially considering all the important places that they didn't get access to and had to 'fake' (like St. Peter's Square). I think one of the major improvements of Demons is the handling of Robert Langdon himself. Unlike the first movie, Tom Hanks actually has some character material to work with this time, as he's confronted to explain his beliefs, and as he has to work through his already-strained relationship with the Catholic Church. (Part of this has to do with how writers Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp turned Angels into a Da Vinci sequel, even though Demons is the first book in the series.) Plus, Hanks isn't saddled with a mullet this time. :) Stepping into the leading lady role this time is Ayelet Zurer (best known as Eric Bana's wife in Munich), as a scientist working with antimatter at the Large Hadron Collider. Her role, while significant, isn't as major as Audrey Tautou's, especially since this movie actually separates Zurer and Hanks for a sizeable portion of screen time. As the acting head of state, Ewan McGregor gives a performance that's relatively engaging. However, I must say that the movie really starts falling apart during the action climax (involving a helicopter). Granted, it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief on my part to make it through both of these Robert Langdon movies, but during the climax, I found myself saying, "Yeah, right!" I don't want to spoil anything, but I assure you: you'll know it when you see it. All told, Angels & Demons pretty much takes the opposite approach of The Da Vinci Code, fixing some of the first movie's problems while introducing a set of its own that Code didn't have. If Howard eventually makes the third Robert Langdon movie, perhaps he'll take what worked from Da Vinci and what worked from Demons, and actually make an undeniably good movie out of those elements. But until then...

Star Rating: 3/5

The 3:00 AM Review (Special 12:00 AM Edition): "Star Trek"

[Note: Thanks to Paramount moving up the start time of Star Trek to 7:00 PM Thursday, I can post this review at a somewhat sensible time of day; hence the 'Special 12:00 AM Edition'. Enjoy!]

The financial coffers of Paramount Pictures, the wrath of hard-core Trekkies, and the strength of the summer movie season all rely on whether J.J. Abrams can successfully reinvigorate the 43-year-old Star Trek franchise from its recent funk. As surprising as it may seem, he's done a commendable job. In fact, I'd say this eleventh Trek film is the most fun I've had in a theater in 2009... even though it's only early May. I should be careful in my wording here, as this is technically not a 'reboot', like many other movie franchises have done recently. I shan't say too much why that is, but I will say that this movie manages to fit in with the events of the original Star Trek series' universe. Watching this movie, I got a lot of the same vibes that I had when I first watched the 2006 Casino Royale; like that movie, writers Roberto J. Orci and Alex Kurtzman (Fringe, the Transformers movies) manage to take most, if not all, of the familiar hallmarks of TOS (among them: mind melds, Vulcan nerve pinches, and even the obligaotory red shirts) and weave them effortlessly (and sometimes, very subtly) into the storyline. Even more impressive, there's a fair amount of time spent on the characters themselves, and not so much on the overarching plot. Obviously, Kirk and Spock's origins are front and center, but the rest of the classic characters get time to shine, too - even if it's only for a scene or two. A lot of the aforementioned fun comes from Chris Pine's portrayal of Kirk; you're definitely not going to hear any stilted Shatner-esque speeches from him, but you'll quickly recognize Kirk's penchant for the ladies and his fearless ways. As Spock, Sylar - I mean, Zachary Quinto - anchors the film's more serious moments reasonably well, as he attempts to accept and deal with his dual heritages. The rest of the cast really seem to embrace their characters, from Karl Urban's McCoy to the late-in-the-game appearance of Simon Pegg as Scotty. (Heck, I never thought I'd see a John Cho (as Sulu) action sequence, let alone enjoy it!) And as for the mid-movie appearance of Leonard Nimoy? Well, I couldn't help but be riveted to the screen. Yes, it may come off as fan service, but Abrams and company handle it in an extremely endearing manner. As for the action itself? Well, there's only a few major action sequences, but they're quite adventurous and carry incredibly high stakes. The pre-title battle sequence, involving Kirk's parents, manages to deftly blend action and high emotion. But, for all the risks that Abrams takes in updating the franchise, some decisions tend to be more jarring than successful; the 'Sabotage' cue that occurs early on just seems out of place to me. And I would've liked more screen time for the supporting cast; now that all the setup stuff is out of the way, I hope the inevitable sequel can fix that. But when all is said and done, the new Star Trek is one heck of a crowd-pleaser, and I think Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike will be satisfied with the end product. At the very least, it's better than Wolverine. :)

Star Rating: 4.5/5

Project Summer: An Introduction

Well, that worked out pretty well.

If you scroll down this page (past the Wolverine review), you’ll find that my previous blog post is dated 1/3/2009. I’m glad to see that I can’t make good on my promises worth a squat. (Of course, I’m relatively certain that nobody read that post to begin with, so we’re still good.) Looking at my Blue Cherry-centric Word document, I found an unfinished “Best of 2008” list that is a bit useless these days (although I could find a way to repurpose some of the content). All in all, the reboot was a spectacular failure.

Now, I can certainly assure you that I wasn’t taking a break from popular culture, by any means. So far in 2009, I’ve taken in 17 movies at the local theaters. They cover the entire range of the filmic spectrum, from The Wrestler to Twilight. (For those of you who’ve friended me on Facebook, you’re no doubt aware of this.) Plus, there’s the workload of television I’ve valiantly kept up with this year – which has made me hope and wish for the first time that networks would cancel as many of the shows that I watch as possible. (Looking at what’s already been picked up so far for next fall, it looks like I’m not going to win.) Fortunately, my network television viewing schedule shuts down on May 18th (or May 19th, if I go ahead and watch the pilot for Ryan Murphy’s Glee). The $64,000 question is: What will I do then?

Well, obviously, I have plans to take in as many big summer movies as possible. My calendar so far includes: Wolverine (which I’ve already seen), Star Trek, Angels & Demons, Terminator: Salvation, Up, Drag Me to Hell, The Hangover, Transformers 2, Public Enemies, Bruno, Funny People, Inglourious Basterds, Final Destination 4, H2, and probably a couple more that I’m forgetting. But obviously, that will only take up a few hours each week, on average. I’ve also got at least one vacation planned, and a potential move. But, I’m hoping to find a decent way to occupy my time.

So, over the past few weeks, I’ve come up with a relatively cool solution. My goal this summer is to watch as much of my growing Blu-ray collection as I can. I’ve been accumulating discs for low, low prices over the past several months, but I haven’t found the time to watch much of them. So, I shall watch them, and I will write about them here. Thus, I’ll accomplish two goals: I’ll work through my backlog of movies, and I’ll actually have a steady stream of content to publish to my blog.

I hope to intersperse other content with my Project Summer writings, such as my hastily written movie reviews. For those who aren’t aware, I’m a big fan of midnight and advanced screenings of movies, which is why you’ll usually find me at the Century 14 on late Thursday nights. Since I prefer to write my movie reviews immediately following these screenings, this usually means that I’m up until 3:00-3:30 in the morning to plop down my initial reactions. Plus, that will hopefully encourage me in my quest to continue producing blog content.

Here are some of the specifics of my so-called-plan:

• In the interest of keeping things as unpredictable as possible, much of what I’ll be watching will be picked at random, using a rudimentary program for cataloging my collection that I wrote in 2003 during my college time. I could pull up anything from Children of Men to Failure to Launch, so this could be a summer of excellence or a summer of masochistic torture. We’ll just have to wait and see.
  
• Brand-new movies that I haven’t seen yet will be given the standard review treatment. Recent movies from the past couple of years, which I have formally reviewed already, will contain my initial reviews from when I first saw the movie, followed by updated comments and re-evaluations. (I know there are several movies that I’ve become less impressed with over time, so hopefully that should make for some interesting reading.)
  
• It’s very possible that some of the movies picked at random will be well-known older movies, or personal favorites. For me, the trick with these flicks will be to find some unique angle or angles from which I can write about these movies. I don’t know exactly how this will work, but we’ll find a way.
  
• With regards to TV series over the summer, I have some very specific plans. Namely, I am hoping to burn through my Blu-ray season sets of Dexter and Mad Men. For Mad Men, my goal is simple: watch both seasons in time to tune into the third-season premiere sometime in July or August. (I was hoping to do this last summer in time for Season Two, but I kept pushing it off. The fact that we didn’t have AMC in HD also influenced matters. But, we finally got AMC HD in December 2008, so now I have a much greater incentive to pull this off.) Likewise, I hope to make it through all three seasons of Dexter; I already have Season One on my shelf, and I will be picking up Season Two this Tuesday. My hope would be to time my viewings of the first two seasons around the time that Season Three will be released (hopefully August). However, I have no immediate plans to tune into Showtime for Season Four. (Let’s face it: for all their awesome original series, their movie selections are crap. That’s why I’m an HBO man.) When writing up on TV shows like these, my approach will be to evaluate them as entire seasons, not episode-by-episode. This will allow me to elaborate more easily on the broad canvas that television series have, namely their narrative goals.

So there you have it. My goal is to kick this shindig off on May 19th or 20th, with perhaps some preview posts to whet your appetites. Let’s hope this goes somewhat better than my January plans.

The 3:00 AM Review: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

Note: In an attempt to fill my blog with content, I am reposting my "Wolverine" review, which I posted on Facebook at 3:26 AM on May 1, 2009. For more information on my theatrical movie reviewing, please consult the "Project Summer: An Introduction" review above.

So, you're 20th Century Fox. You have a very lucrative X-Men movie franchise, but you can't afford to shell the mega-bucks to reunite the A-list ensemble cast for X-Men 4. Solution? Devise as many X-Men-related spinoffs as you can. For their first effort, they've taken the easy route by developing a movie around the movies' most popular character, Wolverine. By re-enacting his origin story, they've created a guaranteed blockbuster to kick off the summer movie season. But how does it stack up? At the very least, Hugh Jackman does what he's expected to do here, giving audiences everything they expect from Wolverine. (The adamantium claws! The stogies! The sideburns!) For a Wolverine solo vehicle, he's come ready to play. (Plus, for the ladies, there's ample opportunities to swoon for Hugh, from the Obligatory Romantic Subplot scenes in Act 1 to a few moments of Wolverine streaking through the wilderness, complete with PG-13-level nudity.) As Logan's brother, Victor (aka Sabretooth), Liev Schreiber makes a good, intimidating villian, although his turn to the dark side isn't really justified. One minute, he's protecting his little kid brother, and the next, he's flipped the switch and attempts to massacre and rape the Vietnamese. Okey-dokey... As for the host of other mutants, most of which are making their first screen appearances: this movie doesn't overkill us with too many characters (*cough*The Last Stand*cough*), but hardly any of them are decently fleshed out, preventing them from actually making a significant impact to the movie. Example: Gambit (Taylor Kitsch, best know as Riggins on TV's Friday Night Lights) shows up, throws some cards in New Orleans, disappears right before the big action finale, and shows up briefly afterwards. If that weren't enough, most of the new mutants show up only to be murdered as part of Victor's evil rampage, so that doesn't help matters. Even the long-awaited appearance of Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) is underwhelming, as he bookends the movie with some ultimately insignificant contributions. Since this a summer blockbuster, you can rest assured that there's tons of action, from the opening credits (which depict Logan and Victor's many tours of duty throughout history) to a climax set at, of all places, Three Mile Island. There's so much fighting, exploding, and clawing to get the summer movie season started. The rare non-action sequences are a bit awkward, if only because the movie's tonal shifts don't work so well, namely the aforemented romance scenes and some bits that are played totally for laughts (such as Wolverine's bathroom scene and the Blob boxing scene). Probably the most disappointing thing about the movie is the ending: it just doesn't feel very satisfying, partially because it's a prequel (and therefore we know the fates of Wolverine and Stryker), partiallly because it resolves some 'X2' continuity in an awkward manner by giving Wolverine amnesia(!), and partially because it makes you say, 'That's it? That's all there is?' Basically, it's a flawed movie, but it's not horrible by any means, and it will get moviegoers by until the next X-Men movie. (Just as a disclaimer: I didn't think The Last Stand was a complete trainwreck, either. But it did have some flaws, that's for sure.) The real litmus test, audience-wise, is going to be the next X-Men flick; if Fox actually goes forward with the Magneto origin movie, will they pull off the first successful summer blockbuster about Auschwitz? We'll see. Until then, enjoy Wolverine! (P.S.: Why would adamantium bullets hurt Wolverine, if his skeleton is primarily adamantium itself? Hmm.) (P.P.S. Stick through the credits for two minor Easter eggs: the first appears shortly after the start of the end credits; the second shows up at the very, very end.)

(Note: After I wrote this review, I found out about the multiple Easter Egg after-credits scenes attached to various prints. For the record, I got the ending with Wolverine in Japan. I had to YouTube the Deadpool ending.)

Star Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)