Star Trek Beyond

After director J.J. Abrams stepped aside to let “Fast & Furious” helmer Justin Lin take his place, many hardcore Trekkies who'er already critical of this rebooted franchise became worried that Lin's third installment would drive the series further away from Gene Roddenberry’s more intellectual vision. While “Star Trek Beyond” doesn’t slow down the momentum or the pacing of this high-octane update, old-school Trek fans may be charmed by the  film's return to a warm and familiar sense of adventurous pulp and sci-fi optimism. Unlike the 2009 reboot, which had to reestablish everything with a new cast and a new style, and unlike its 2013 sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness," which reworked the story beats of the most beloved installment of the original Star Trek films, this outing is much smaller in scope and more contained as a story.

James Kirk (Chris Pine) is feeling melancholy about his place as the ship’s Captain, upon realizing that he has just surpassed the age that his father was when he died. Spock (Zachary Quinto) too is wondering how his place in this unified multi-cultural mission when he learns that the elder version of himself from another dimension (Leonard Nimoy) has passed away. With these character dilemmas in the background, the enterprise is called upon to investigate a deep-space distress call, where they are ambushed by a swarm of small enemy attack ships, crash-landing on a foreign planet. The group  becomes separated into pairs of survivors and have to regroup to find a means for escape as well as a way to stop their new enemy from unleashing a space virus on a nearby society of peaceful workers.

The plot dynamics of this particular adventure are somewhat generic and well worn, but that allows for more impact when it comes to the character dynamics and the focus of the films action sequences. The movie quickly gets us into the head space of this group and grounds the plot in the emotional hurdles of each member. The chemistry between Pine, Quinto and Karl Urban's Doctor McCoy informs the spectacle in a way that few summer tent poles remember to do.  Jon Cho as Sulu, Simon Peg as Scotty, and the recently deceased Anton Yelchin as Chekov are also given key sequences to shine. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura is sidelined the most within the original group as Sophia Boutella becomes the key female cast member playing the stranded warrior Jaylah, who allies herself with the Enterprise to rescue the 'red-shirts' from the evil Krall (Idris Elba).

Speaking of Krall, luckily the bright eyed adventure of the movie and creative set pieces more than make up for the lack of an interesting villain—Elba is unfortunately buried under too much make-up and plot to really resonate beyond his narrative function.

Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s screenplay almost celebrates the filler spot many mid-franchise sequels eventually occupy, but it’s this multi-million-dollar smallness that rescues the picture from being too encumbered by plot and fan-service. There isn’t anything especially remarkable to say about “Star Trek Beyond” other than it knows how to balance tone, story, action and characters in way that keeps the audience from thinking too much about its construction as a piece of consumable popcorn product.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2016

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Ghostbusters (2016) review

Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” remake has been a lightning rod for controversy since it was announced a couple of years ago that the picture would feature an all-female cast. Though the living cast members of the original 1984 film have given their blessing to this project and have even appeared in in the picture as bit parts, for some, this has been the straw that breaks the back of fan-culture when it comes to remaking their favorite nerd properties from the 80s. This internet outrage has also caught the attention of a less than savory flavor of he-man-women-haters and racists who’ve used the film as a soapbox to attack these actresses as well as feminism as a whole, which has then forced the media into siding with Feig and his project in hopes to proportionately counter the negative online buzz. What does any of this have to do with the movie, you might ask, not very much at all.

Like most classics that we now take granted now, the original “Ghostbusters” was a film that, on paper, shouldn’t have worked. It’s an absurd premise that’s actually taken semi-seriously and features a cast of television comedians playing doctors and scientists.  It also made allusions to the heroes’ interests in the occult, smack-dab in the middle of America’s satanic panic, and the screenplay’s structure is a more loosely accumulative than it is classically three-act.  This remake irons out all of those kinks and idiosyncrasies for something that is unsurprisingly more safe and centered around a series of jokes and premises rather than scenes.

Like the original, this film is also comprised of actors mined from Saturday Night Live such as Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon, as well as Feig’s muse Melissa McCarthy. Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, an uptight physicist who's lost her tenure at the university that employed her when a video is leaked that connects her with past interests in paranormal study. She’s then reunited with her former partner in crime Abby (McCarthy) and Abby's zany lab assistant Jillian (McKinnon).  With nowhere to go but up the group moves their headquarters to the attic of a Chinese restaurant in New York where they up shop as a ghost removal service. Later they enlist the help of a hunky but flighty receptionist named Kevin (Chris Hemsworth), as well as Metro worker named Patty (Jones) who’s been witnessing strange things in the underground tunnels.

There are plenty of nods and winks to the 1984 predecessor but the majority of the plot elements here are conceived from a much less specific place and the jokes are based more on visual gags and punch-lines than they are on character. Wiig is a passive, bland lead, McCarthy simmers her wild comedic persona to blend into the ensemble and its Jones and McKinnon who provide the films hardiest chuckles, making broader, wilder character choices.  Hemsworth isn't given a lot to do but he's game to play an empty-headed receptionist and has a few funny moments of his own. Still, the movie never really takes off like it should and the plot elements never coalesces into something I could comfortably call a story. Like Feig’s previous work (“Spy,” “Bridesmaids”) this movie is based around key comedic set-pieces and conversational dialogue, which is then restricted by many complicated special effects and a PG-13 rating that doesn't seem to suit this cast or this director.

As a story, this “Ghostbusters” doesn’t have the mythic complexity or the same sense of character history that its source material was able to weave into the narrative and as a comedy I can’t say that laughed as much as I wanted to. I enjoy the neon look of the special effects and some of the new gadgets are silly and exuberant in a Saturday morning cartoon sort-of way, but even if we are only comparing this to previous Feig comedies this would still rank pretty low. My childhood is still intact and the female cast doesn’t threaten my masculinity--nor does it subvert anything as a political gesture--but this remake's screenplay is noticeably lazy and I’d be lying if said I found this effort to be a satisfying or substantive movie going experience.   

Grade: C-

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal - July/2016

The BFG review

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the classic Roald Dahl novel “The BFG” suggests a director and source material paring that should yield exciting work. Spielberg is the master of creating four-quadrant Hollywood product that rides the line between the joy and wonder of cinema with an undercurrent of menace and Hitchcockian thrills. Dahl’s books capture a similar sense of childhood wish fulfillment often shadowed by morose details and black humor. Unfortunately, somewhere in the production of “The BFG” the sneakier tones and shades that made the original story pop were glossed over with a slick, motion-capture focused accessibility that’s flattens its most interesting quirks.

When the movie's protagonist Sophie, played by newcomer Ruby Barnhill, stares out of the window of her orphanage bedroom and we first see the shadow of the 60-foot Big Friendly Giant, we get a glimpse of the Spielbergian power of mystery and imagination. After the clearly animated giant then snatches our protagonist through the window and brings her back to his magical home in giant land the sense of mystery is quickly replaced with focus on the special effects and Dahl’s idiosyncratic dialogue. We are also introduced to a pack of bigger, meaner, man-eating giants who live with the BFG and who pose a threat to Sophie, so long as she’s living with her capture, but that threat is never treated with enough weight or seriousness to effectively motivate the narrative.

The film tries to balance the unfamiliarity and strangeness of Sophie’s new surroundings, and like Dahl’s other novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” we are lead through a series of set pieces were we are introduced to a lot of silly and bizarre concepts, but the hallmark-channel tone of the film never allows for the necessary emotional peaks or valleys to ground these concepts in a way that properly thrusts the story. Even John Williams’s lilting score is always humming inoffensively in the background and never recedes or swells to punctuate scenes in a meaningful way.

The choice to iron over Dahl’s threatening world with the story’s friendlier message leaves the audience with little else to attach ourselves. The photo-realistic animation is the focus of the movie and it isn’t new enough or distinct enough to wow us into loving the characters. Mark Rylance’s voice work as the friendly giant is commendable and Barnhill’s interactions with a green-screen environment is seamless and mostly convincing but the film suffers from an amiable blandness that surprisingly lacks creative vision.

As a children’s film “The BFG” is not a grating or unbearable experience but it’s also not a memorable one either and from Spielberg this come with a harsher critical eye, given that he essentially perfected this genre with his past films such as “E.T: The Extra Terrestrial.” Hell, even the often maligned “Hook” took more risks and wasn’t afraid to build in moments of suspense and peril to underline the dramatic stakes. “The BFG” has a few transcendent moments in which it’s director seemed to be engaged with the material, but the overall execution of the film is a missed opportunity.

Grade: C

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal - July/2016

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The Neon Demon review

Danish filmmaker Nicholas Winding Refn (“Drive,” “Bronson,” “Pusher”) is an exciting and daring stylist who’s equally confounding and frustrating as a visual storyteller. Like many auteurs in the post-modern era, he wears his influences on his sleeve and uses pastiche as a way of creating new meaning from old genre tropes. His latest film “The Neon Demon” combines the dreamy nature of euro-trash, exploitation horror with the camp sensibility of a  Hollywood rise and fall drama.

Because of their surface interests in shock and attitude, horror and camp have always been kissing cousins and both have often shared a lot of space on the cult-movies racks of the now-extinct video stores, but here Refn isn’t satisfied with simply achieving approval as a cult curiosity, he also wishes to be taken seriously as an artist and a visionary. Perhaps it’s the way the film vibrates between the boarders of shock, camp and art-house experimentation that prevents it/saves it from conveniently being excepted as any of the above, while also never settling on an appeal those different tones might provide.

Elle fanning plays the lead as a Jesse, a young runaway trying make it as a model in Los Angeles. Because of innocent youth and her effortless beauty, she’s quickly signed to a top agency where she catches the attention of Jenna Malone as a make-up artist named Ruby and two viciously completive models named Gigi (Bella Heathcoat) and Sarah (Abbey Lee). As Jesse begins to slowly come out of her shell and her naivety is—supernaturally? —transformed into spotlight bravado, her urban-fairytale surroundings creep in closer and closer, becoming more hostile as the movie progresses.

Though the story is quite traditional, Refn’s take on the material is anything but. The movie opens on a slow moving tableau of Jesse who appears murdered and blood soaked. This reveals itself to be stylish photoshoot in which our heroine is trying to put together a portfolio. Given the eventual trajectory of the plot, this also mirrors the staged beauty and ornate artificiality of the film itself and the genre it’s participating in. Refn challenges the notion of style over substance—a critical dart often thrown in his direction—by embracing a world and a set of characters in which style is substance. At one point a hacky fashion designer tells our protagonist “Beauty isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing,” and with that philosophy in mind, this movie couldn’t be more aesthetically satisfying. Every frame is meticulously designed with dramatic lighting schemes that paints the world in fluorescent reds and pinks and turquoise. Even Jesse’s seedy Pasadena hotel room is designed and arranged within an inch of its life. This, along with Cliff Martinez’s synthy score that harkens back to the work of 1980s Tangerine Dream, all helps to create a sleepy, slow-motion nightmare.

There’s a lot to soak in here and much to appreciate on an aesthetic level and as a horror movie the flick meets its splatter quota with a third act that dares to go to exceedingly disturbing and twisted places, but the pacing is sometimes a bit too deliberate and the tension it needs to maintain as a psychological thriller is intermittently relaxed for the sake of bathing in the hallucinatory scenery.

“The Neon Demon” feels like an experiment in genre that was never quite resolved before it hit the screen, but it never lacks something to look at, something the laugh at, or something that will make you genuinely wince and squirm. For all its flaws and awkward handling of the narrative, this is undeniably active cinema at work and Refn’s clarity of vision shouldn’t be ignored in favor of the comfort of conventionality.

Grade: B

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "The Neon Demon."