World War Z

Everyone should really have a zombie preparedness plan.  It's only a matter of time until the shuffling undead crowd our streets.  I know I have my own plan.  When the outbreak hits, I'm going to meet my friends Elise and John at Stone Mountain in Atlanta.  From there we will venture to the woods and live like Swiss Family Robinson.  With shotguns.  I'll be team leader, of course.  A huge ZZ Top beard will bedeck my chin and a ridiculously large revolver will swing low on my hip.  John will be demolitions man/sniper and Elise...she's going to cook.  She makes these amazing cloud cookies and, since I'm pretty sure she's the only one with the recipe, I don't want her fighting those drooling monsters.

Yeah, it's a nice fantasy.  I understand why zombies are all the craze right now.  When the world ends, it all goes back to zero.  Too big a balance on your credit card?  Did you buy one too many pairs of Christian Louboutins?  No problem.  You can wear those babies till the heels come off and no creditors will come calling.  Who cares about how many LinkedIn connections you have?  No one's hiring for entry level or middle management now.  No matter how far ahead or behind we may feel, everything we found to be important is gone.  Survival is the name of the game and, walking through a Wal-Mart, you'll probably pass by the cheap DVD bin and head straight for the batteries and Power bars.  The gaudy commercialism is just an echo of a former world.

Well, I hate to break it to you, but the zombie apocalypse hasn't happened and it probably won't happen for quite some time.  The Wal-marts of the world are still up and running and their shelves are filled...with zombies.  There are zombie videogames, zombie t-shirts, and zombie movies and TV shows.  I've even seen zombie dolls for the morbid little tykes.  We are inundated with the undead and it's getting annoying.

Thus, as I walked into the theatre for World War Z, the film already had some points against it.  Take an oversaturated film genre, give it a screenwriter I despise (Damon Lindelof), and give Marc Forster, one of the most mediocre directors in Hollywood, the helm.  All these things added up to a film I would rather avoid.  Still, I gave it a shot for my man Brad Pitt's sake and, I must say, I was not disappointed.  While it has its problems, World War Z is a competent, big-budget action film.  The story is tight, if a bit predictable. The dialogue is natural, if too expositional at times.  And, surprisingly, Marc Forster knows how to direct a sweeping, big-budget blockbuster.

Back in the early days of the zombie flick, everything was very small.  In the first modern zombie film, Night of the Living Dead, the narrative takes place in and around a little farmhouse.  In the sequel, Dawn of the Dead, the survivors opt for an empty mall, a much larger space. Still, it is one enclosed space.  Even a film like 28 Days Later restricts its environment to London and the surrounding cities.  In the early scenes of World War Z, we know that we are in for a much larger zombie film— perhaps the first "epic" zombie film.  Brad Pitt's Gerry Lane and his family sit in Philadelphia traffic when the outbreak occurs.  Large trucks crunch into one another, cars flip end over end, and hundreds, thousands of running slobbering creatures crawl over the entire mess.  There is more death and destruction in this opening scene than in all the George A. Romero zombie films combined.  Yep, it's big.

And it doesn't stop there.  Pitt's character must travel all over the world to track down the cure for this dangerous infection. Imagine Steven Soderberg's Contagion with 20 times the budget.  That's the plot.  In Max Brooks' novel, there is no central character, and the reader is given only vignettes of the destruction, instead of one narrative.  In Forster's film, this structure is mostly abandoned, but not completely.  As Pitt ventures from the Indian Ocean to South Korea to Israel, we see how different communities have reacted to the viral outbreak.  Pitt acts almost as a travelling narrator, and we feel the influence of Brooks' original story.

That's pretty much all Pitt has to do.  Sadly, there isn't much of a character in Gerry Lane.  He's handsome, smart, and he knows how to duct tape knives to stuff.  And...That’s it.  As always, the movie star is entertaining and likable and, even when his character feels flat, you still want to cheer for the guy.  Considering the rumors that Forster and Pitt stopped talking on the set, it is clear that Pitt is acting alone.  We get to see all his old tricks. My favorite is the one where he feels overwhelmed, looks up, and starts to cry. He does the same in Babel, Legends of the Fall, and The Assassination of Jesse James.  Hey, it works for the guy and Gerry Lane comes across as a loving father who wants to kick some ass.

While Forster attempts to add some sweet character moments between Lane and his family, they are swallowed by the surrounding story.  The film feels like a cross between Zero Dark Thirty, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Day of the Dead.  Forster never has had a very recognizable directorial style and, in World War Z, he clearly borrows his subdued tones and hyper-realistic style from directors like Kathryn Bigelow and Paul Greengrass.  There are moments when the computer-generated effects overcome the realistic tone, but, for the most part, it is all believable and exciting.  Forster clearly understands how too many visual effects can lose an audience's attention, so he sticks to real stunt performances and practical effects.  The zombie actors deserve credit for their shaky and unsettling silent performances.  Many of them look like corpses doing the Robot.  This really is a new type of zombie and, for the first film in a long time, the genre feels fresh.

Still, there is something missing.  Maybe it's the extra hour of story the film crew shot.  Maybe it's actors like Matthew Fox who show up for one scene and clearly have more backstory sitting on a cutting room floor somewhere.  Overall the film feels somewhat thrown together.  Like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate or Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, this is what is left after 350 million dollars and years of production woes.  The film works, but it seems as if this is all they had to show.  The film fits together as a story, but just barely.  The supposed craziness of the shoot does not translate to the screen as it did with Apocalypse Now.  Instead, World War Z comes across as cold and a bit lifeless.  Pun intended.

I guess it's unfair to judge a film for what happened behind the scenes.  As a goreless and bloodless zombie film, World War Z is just fine.  The film is superior to many of the messy blockbusters of 2013.  The story is simple and the action is exciting.  In the end, Brad Pitt does okay in the zombie apocalypse.  Still, he would probably be better off with someone to bake him cloud cookies.  Sorry Brad, my zombie preparedness plan is much better than yours.

Man of Steel

It's scary being lost.  I often wake up and know with every fiber of my being that I am not doing what I was meant to do.  It is frustrating and terrifying.  Why did I get a Master's if I'm not using it?  Why aren't I married with kids like the rest of my adult friends?  Why do I feel like a 13-year-old in a 29-year-old body?  Like many people, I find myself in the middle of a big old identity crisis.

I suppose that's why I'm so drawn to comic books and superheroes.  Some may say that superhero films are pure escapism.  Who doesn't want to fly or climb walls?   I don't think that's it.  I believe I connect to superheroes because these are characters who have embraced their destiny.  While Lois Lanes and J. Jonah Jamesons attempt to uncover the masked vigilantes' secret identities, for the heroes there is no such mystery.  After years of training or self searching, these crime fighters have found out exactly who they are.  I'm jealous.

In Man of Steel, Zach Snyder's most recent foray into the world of comic books, Superman fights to discover himself in a strange world and, for the most part, he succeeds.  Man, this is a movie.  So few films actually feel like "movies" anymore.  The line between television and film has been blurred so that TV episodes feel like mini films and films feel like long episodes of television.  What does a movie look like?  Well, it looks like this.  

Man of Steel is big.  Like Henry Cavill's pecs, it's really, really big.  Did he do a thousand push-ups a day?  Maybe he injected saline into his chest.  I don't know what he did, but it sure worked . . . no wonder I feel like a 13-year-old.  I gotta get back to the gym . . . . Anyway, this film is an exercise in cinematic excess.  The natural vistas are as broad as anything shot by John Ford.  The action scenes will probably make Michael Bay go back to the drawing board.  The story is epic and brings to mind Wagnerian operas, Biblical heroes, and Greek myths.  It's loud, bombastic, and visually stimulating.

I have to admit, I am not a Zach Snyder fan.  I enjoyed his remake of Dawn of the Dead, but the rest of his oeuvre made me want to quit watching movies.  I saw Sucker Punch at midnight, and I was pretty sure my friends put some acid in my Diet Coke.  I'm not sure it even qualifies as cinema. Even 300 disgusted me.  While so many of my friends marveled at the oiled up muscles of a mush-mouthed Gerard Butler, I tried doing long division in my head to keep myself occupied.  Yeah, Zach Snyder isn't my favorite director.  When I heard he was directing Man of Steel, I did two things; I cried and made sure there wasn't any acid in my Diet Coke.  It had to be some kind of bad trip.

Well, I'm happy to say, Snyder pulled it out with Man of Steel.  It's a solid blockbuster movie.  The shots are dynamic and the action is mind-blowing.  I have never seen the powers of super human beings so perfectly displayed as in this film.  Superman and the villainous Kryptonian soldiers move at staggering speed and punch with frightening might.  Train cars fly through the air and muscly bodies crash through dry wall, concrete, and rebar.  You can feel the epic strength of Superman in every sequence as he breaks the sound barrier and lifts tons of heavy debris.   Unlike in most films today, the action is smart and memorable.

Snyder is lucky to have Henry Cavill to fill the tights of his lead character.  Though his character does come across as flat in a few scenes, for the most part, Cavill plays the role with great ease and charm.  He convinces the audience of his great power with his confidence and ramrod stance.  He is assisted by the cute and snarky Amy Adams.  Adams plays Lois Lane and, while she doesn't have much to do in the film, she is a fitting romantic sidekick for the man with the red cape.  Laurence Fishburne and Christopher Meloni also turn in solid performances as Perry White and Colonel Hardy, respectively.

The two actors who stand out the most are Michael Shannon and Russell Crowe.  I don't really mean that as a compliment.  I think Shannon is one of the finest actors working in film today.  His performances in Take Shelter and Shotgun Stories are true master classes in film acting.  However, in Man of Steel, he sticks out like a sore thumb.  This is Shannon's first enormous Hollywood film, and he has trouble transitioning between acting styles.  It appears that he watched the villainous roles of John Travolta for inspiration.  He yells a lot and stares with frightening google eyes.  Unlike Shannon, Russell Crowe is not new to big Hollywood films.  However, in this film, he simply chews scenery in his best impersonation of Marlon Brando.  He speaks every line like it is the most important thing ever said on Earth or on Krypton.  Still, he does get to ride a flying dinosaur and shoot a big laser cannon.  And, of course, he looks cool doing it.

Everybody and everything look really, really cool.  The film's greatest strengths are its production design and cinematography.  The opening scenes on Krypton rival the world building of Avatar.  Large-winged animals swoop through alien towers and craggy peaks.  The costumes and ships look like they were designed by H.R Giger.  The metal armor and breathing masks come right out of the design for Alien. It's all a bit phallic and vaginal, but maybe no one will notice. The film is cast in muted sepia tones and cool, foggy hues. It looks at once fantastic and hyper-realistic.  From a visual standpoint, the film is damn near perfect.

The script, however, is not so perfect. In fact, it's downright messy.  Though the superhero should struggle to find his identity, the superhero film should not have the same issue.  Unfortunately, that is the case with Man of Steel. Throughout the film, it is clear that screenwriter David Goyer and director Snyder aren't really sure who their protagonist is.  Superman is able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but the script should not leap large plot holes with a single line. The plot and character arcs are muddy throughout the film and the hero's journey skips around with great abandon.  At the end of the film, I didn't feel like I knew who Superman was or how he had gotten there.

Still, Superman is a hard character to grasp, and I can't fault the filmmakers for stumbling where so many have before.  I may be a little disappointed that Superman hasn't quite solved his identity crisis, but it's nice to know that even a man who can fly feels a little lost sometimes.  

The Purge

In the backroom of my friend's house, there hangs a bent golf club.  Passing by, most people think it means that he's just a bad golfer.  Most would never guess that he bent it busting in someone's windshield.  One night, some punks were trying to steal his neighbor's grill.  Surprisingly, he ran out and foiled the robbery with the help of his trusty golf club.  My friend is even more mild-mannered than me, and that bent golf club hangs as a reminder that even the most non-violent person has a breaking point.

In the home-invasion film, ordinary people find out where those breaking points lie.  In Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, a devout Christian father finds there is violence in his heart when a group of travelling outlaws comes calling.  In the film's remake, Last House on the Left, two "normal" parents use chainsaws and baseball bats to break bone, crack skulls, and exact revenge on three misanthropes.  In The Strangers, a loving young couple fight for their lives when a group of masked killers terrorize them at random.  And, in James DeMonaco's The Purge, a wealthy family must protect their home and fight for their hold on that spot in the coveted 1%.

I'm sure The Purge looks amazing on paper.  What a great idea for a film.  In the near future, the government sanctions an annual 12-hour killing spree.  Supposedly, this allows citizens to "purge" their pent up aggression and hatred in one violent night.  It feels like John Carpenter could have written this movie.  It has the "what-if" near future setting of Escape from New York and the invasion film narrative of Assault on Precinct 13.  Unfortunately, John Carpenter did not write this movie.  If he had, maybe this film wouldn't be so preachy, boring, and ineffective.

While James DeMonaco proves to be a simple and functional director, he just doesn't have the chops for a film like this.  Some of the scenes are tightly directed and the suspense is palpable, but the remainder of the film seems to be a rehash of old genre gimmicks and cheap scares.  A character walks across the foreground, revealing a killer standing right behind.  Someone hears a sound.  He turns.  He turns back and the killer is there.  It's not scary in the least.  So many of the scares and plot twists are telegraphed from the first scene.  In the beginning of the film, DeMonaco draws special attention to aspects of the house and certain props.  Of course, all of these previewed images come into play in the climax of the film.  Chekov would be proud.  Still, DeMonaco is too obvious in his exposition.  Leave some mystery for us.

The acting is not too laughable, but there isn't much to write home about.  Ethan Hawke is as serious as ever, and his teeth are as crooked as ever. My Dad has an unexplained dislike for Hawke.  Every time he shows up in a movie, my Dad says, "How does this guy keep getting work? He's really weird looking."  Hey, we can't all have perfect teeth, Dad.  Still, Hawke plays the caring yet alienating patriarch well.  Lena Headey is solid as the strong mother and shows off her action training from The Cave and 300.  The kids are fine in their generic roles.  The real highlight is the film's villain, Rhys Wakefield.  The actor has great fun as a sociopathic prep school student. The cadence of his dialogue is strange and off-putting.  He smiles through the whole performance, but you can see the menace underneath it all.

The film's main problem is its message.  Well, its main problem is that it tries to have a message.  At one point, the film attempts to show how violence is not the answer.  Hawke and Headey show that they are above all this killing. You can't put someone out on the street to die, even if it means the death of your family.  So, Mr. DeMonaco, violence is bad right?  Wrong.  In the latter part of the film, Hawke and Headey turn into complete badasses.  They don't just break windshields with golf clubs.  They gun down the invaders with great gusto, blood flying everywhere.  They use axes and knives in disgusting ways.  While Hawke looks sad at the sight of a female corpse, it is momentary and silly. The "message" is uneven, maybe nonexistent.  DeMonaco doesn't know what he's trying to say.

It's a shame, because most home invasion films have some interesting views on revenge and violence.  Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs is disturbing as it questions the evil that hides inside the human psyche.  In Bergman's The Virgin Spring, Max Van Sydow attempts to wash the blood off his revenge-soaked hands.  He screams at God, asking how his daughter was allowed to die.  Powerful stuff.  Definitely better than watching Ethan Hawke stumble around looking for an orthodontist.  Can't he afford Invisalign?  In Funny Games, Michael Haneke self-reflexively critiques the violence in media and society.  All of these films leave me feeling uncomfortable, and that is a good thing.  When violence is close to "home" maybe it shouldn't be so fun.

And this film was definitely fun for the audience.  I saw The Purge in a crowded auditorium where the people were cheering and clapping with each gruesome kill.  Watching films like Grindhouse or Dawn of the Dead, I'm the first to join in screaming and laughing.  However, in a film attempting social critique, this is troubling.  Or, perhaps this is a healthy way for us to experience horror and mayhem in a controlled, safe environment.  Maybe we do need to let it out, and horror films allow that.  Maybe films like The Purge allow audiences to purge themselves.

Now You See Me

Who doesn't love a good magic trick?  Lord knows I do.  I even fancied myself a magician at the age of fourteen.  As my parents have done with all my endeavors, they supported my plan to be the next Chris Angel.  Well, without the press-on tattoos, ear gauges, and douchey persona . . . . They bought me the magic rings and the cigarette in the quarter trick.  All the classics.  My dream to make a go at professional trickery quickly went up in a puff of smoke, so to speak.  In Freshman English, we were supposed to demonstrate a process in front of the class.  Most of the jocks showed how to make a peanut butter sandwich.  Pretty fascinating stuff.  I think I might have been better off showing off my sandwichery, because I totally failed in showing off my magic skills.  I was trying to make a quarter disappear, but my hands shook so badly that the coin dropped to the floor, making an echoing clink clink clink.  I ended my presentation with, "And that's how you do magic."  That was the end of my magic career.

It's really no surprise that I was so enamored of magic, considering my lifelong love of cinema.  In the early 20th century, the films of Thomas Edison and D.W. Griffith played in the same vaudeville theaters where Abracadbra men applied their trade.  Early filmmakers like George Melies used the new motion picture camera to perform never-before-seen magic tricks.  Rocket ships crashed into anthropomorphic satellites.  Moon men disappeared in small colored explosions.  At that time, Melies used a simple cut in action to achieve this effect.  Over the last century, cinematic magic tricks have gotten more elaborate, and it is easy to forget that filmmakers and magicians were once close cousins.

Hollywood has not forgotten its relationship with its magical forebears.  While it is not a very common genre, the Magic films show up every few years.  I love them all.  I probably watched Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions 30 times.  It's a pretty bad movie, but you gotta love a private-eye Scott Bakula fighting demonic magicians.  Cinematic gold.  Then there's the much better and much less gory The Prestige.  Christopher Nolan's tale of dueling illusionists is a great period piece mystery that depicts the obsession behind most of these illusory acts.  The Magic film is really about cinema itself.  It's about drawing an audience in, telling them a story, and showing them something they've never seen before.

The main pitfall of the Magic film genre is that the audience knows they are being misdirected.  This is nowhere more evident than in Louis Leterrier's Now You See Me.  From frame one, we are told that nothing is as it seems.  The heroes of the tale, The Four Horsemen, are a group of hip, funny, intelligent magicians.  They use their great gifts to rob from the rich and give to the poor.  It's Robin Hood meets David Copperfield.  Well, not the Charles Dickens book . . . the magician with the big goggle eyes.  Remember he made that tank disappear like 10 years ago?  Anyway, we know that these four magicians are going to outsmart the authorities, the bad guys, and, ultimately, us.  For viewers it's hard to get comfortable watching a film like this.  In every scene, it feels like one more carpet is pulled out from underneath our feet.  Oh, that guy wasn't dead?  Oh, there was a trap door there?  Nothing is stable in this film; the characters, the motivations, even the narrative.  It is hard to really immerse yourself in a film when the director keeps shaking his finger at you.

Director Louis Leterrier may know how to perform a good trick, but that doesn't make him a great director.  This guy's career has run the gamut from good (Unleashed), to bad (The Transporter 2), to god-awful (Clash of the Titans). Seriously, Clash of the Titans gave me a migraine.  Most of the time, the director toes the mediocrity line.  He's like a French, low-class Ron Howard.  The filmmaking is functional and clean.  Dialogue scenes are cut in the normal way, over-the-shoulder to over-the-shoulder.  The camera floats and swoops around the characters without any real motivation, but at least we see what's going on.  Leterrier has no real directorial flourishes, but at least he knows how to stay out of the way of his actors.

It's clear that directing actors isn't Leterrier's strong suit, but he is served well by an entertaining cast.  All the actors have been cast to play their normal roles.  Jesse Eisenberg plays the fast talking, neurotic male lead.  He's like a young Woody Allen with a deck of cards.  Isla Fisher plays the sexy and snarky heroine.  Woody Harrelson rattles off amusing banter with great ease. And, of course, there's Morgan Freeman as the wise old man.  There's not one remarkable performance in the whole film, but there's nothing too laughable.  There are some pretty terrible lines, but the entire cast sells it.

They all play their parts well, but it's still a bit hammy. The movie feels like a Las Vegas show: gaudy, sexy, and fake.  You can feel the essence of Liberace oozing out of this movie.  This fakeness is the film's main problem.  Except for a few occasions, all the magic in the film is accomplished with computer generated effects.  While digital effects artists are really the great grandchildren of the stage magician, I would have preferred to see some real sleight-of-hand in this film.  There is great opportunity for this in Now You See Me, and the filmmakers missed their chance to make a believable yet thrilling film. In one scene, Dave Franco, James' snarky little bro, goes toe to toe with his cop adversary, Mark Ruffalo.  Using his illusionist skills, Franco throws handcuffs onto characters, disappears into curtains, and reappears behind mirrors.  It's really amazing stuff, and I truly wish there were more of it.  Most of the other magic is so outlandish it could only have been done with some keystrokes.

In the end, it's fun.  I enjoyed myself from the beginning to end and, while it's a poorly made film, it's a nice magic trick.  There's no real replay value to Now You See Me, because once the magician shows you how it's done, you lose interest.  Don't worry, I won't ruin the surprise.  It's not much of a reveal anyway.  This feels as though it should have been a January release, but given the poor quality of the Blockbusters this summer, Now You See Me comes out looking pretty good.  $11.75 is pretty steep for a movie ticket, but I don't feel like I was tricked out my money.

Fast and Furious 6

So, I'm a waiter.  It's good work and I love sleeping in every day. One time an old lady grabbed my butt.  Hey, it happens.  I consider it a work hazard.  One of the most important things I've learned in my years slinging drinks and dropping plates is that people want what they pay for.  If some old dude orders a steak sandwich medium-rare, I probably shouldn't bring him a salmon salad with a low-fat raspberry vinaigrette.  I get it.  When I order a bacon cheeseburger, I don't want seared Ahi tuna.  I want my heart-attack sandwich, and I want it nice and juicy.

I feel the same way about films.  If I'm in the mood to think about my place in the universe, then fall asleep, I'll put on Solaris.  Tarkovsky is the cinematic equivalent of warm milk.  If I'm in the mood to sit on the edge of my seat, choke on my Twizzlers, and applaud at great daring-do, I'll put on a Fast and Furious movie.  I'm not going to lie; I love these movies.  They're the equivalent of that great bacon cheeseburger, and director Justin Lin is the ultimate grill-master.  Over the past three films, Tokyo Drift, Fast and Furious, and Fast 5, Lin has created a sleek, streamlined, exciting environment where big men say what they mean and punch who they hate.  Lin has made this series his own in the same way David Yates did with the last four Harry Potter films.  He and recurring screenwriter Chris Morgan know who these characters are and, better yet, what the audience expects.

Lin and Morgan's winning streak continues with Fast and Furious 6.  Man, what a thrill ride.  I know that's a film review cliché.  Whatever, it's how I feel.  The movie is fast, simple, and clean.  The script doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but that is not a problem here.  The word "formula" has become another naughty "f" word in Hollywood.  So many Hollywood Blockbusters try to break the mold; they end up with messy stories and lame characters.  Justin Lin and Chris Morgan have no such fear of formula.  Fast 6 knows what genre it is in and follows the rules to the letter.  There's a bad guy.  He wants to steal a doomsday device.  The good guys have to stop him.  Stuff blows up.  For more examples, see every action movie made between 1984 and 1995.

The film does not simply go through the motions, however.  With each of his Fast and Furious films, director Lin raises the bar on action.  The explosions are bigger.  The crashes are crazier.  What sets Lin's action scenes apart is the childlike glee with which he directs them.  When I was five, I had a favorite spot for playing with my action figures.  It overlooked our staircase and it was perfect for hanging little plastic guys from pieces of my mom's yarn.  I would often tie toy cars to planes and hang the whole thing over the ledge.  My action figures would climb this big piece of swinging wreckage, fighting the whole time.  With Fast 6, it feels like Justin Lin watched my playroom sessions and storyboarded his film.  Tanks crush sports cars and blow up bridges.  Cars hang from planes by mono-filament cables.  What a great action movie word: mono-filament.  That's what Batman uses in his grappling hook.  Awesome.  Sorry...It's all a bit ridiculous, but it works.

As in the previous films, Lin tries to shoot as many of these action set-pieces on set and in-camera as he can.  He grounds the over-the-top action by cutting down on the use of digital effects.  True, we can see the help of computer graphics during many of the sequences, but the majority of the action is performed by real people in real cars.  I don't care how lifelike and realistic digital effects have become; I can always feel the difference when I watch a film.  The action scenes in Fast 6 are so effective because these are real people performing real death-defying stunts.  Since the beginning of cinema, we have marveled at the lithe movements of actors like Douglas Fairbanks and Jackie Chan as well as unsung stuntmen like Vic Armstrong and Buster Reeves.  You really can't replace the skill it takes to jump between moving cars with a matte painting and computer-generated actors.

Yep, Justin Lin uses real stunt men and real actors.  Well, I might not call Paul Walker an "actor"...more a guy who stands there and looks pretty.  Still, he doesn't get in the way of the real stars of this film: Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson.  I can't help it; these guys are great.  Along with Jason Statham, these are the only actors keeping the spirit of the 80s and 90s action star alive.  Diesel is like a cross between Lee Marvin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, with his gravelly voice and killer bod.  Johnson looks like he just ate a horse and bench-pressed my Toyota Camry.  I swear his biceps are wider than my thighs.  Next to the action, their budding bromance is the highlight of the film.  Take the scene from Predator where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers shake hands, their arms bulging and veins popping out.  Extend that for two hours.  That's Fast 6.  There's so much testosterone dripping off this movie, I think I actually grew more hair on my chest.  It's funny, considering all these guys are bald.

True, most of the character arcs are clichéd, but they really work in this genre.  There's amnesia, double crosses, and all kinds of cheesy dialogue.  Still, it's done with such gusto, you have to buy it.  There's nothing but sincerity as far as the eye the can see.  It would make old Linus proud, sitting in his pumpkin patch.   There are lines like "Show me how you ride and I'll show you who you are."  Wow.  How Vin Diesel said that without laughing is beyond me.  A lot of it feels like a big budget version Walker, Texas Ranger, but you gotta love it.

It's been a very weak start to the summer Blockbuster season.  Films like Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness have shown what happens when a film tries to do too much and accomplishes little.  There's something to be said for a director who knows his strengths and weaknesses.  Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris are there for the comedy.  Vin Diesel is there to perform the greatest head-butt in movie history.  The cars are there to be destroyed and the girls are there to look really sexy. They do. They really, really do.  It's like one big, unhealthy, delicious meal.  Check please.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Growing up, I never really liked Star Trek.  My early childhood was the era of Star Trek: The Next Generation and I didn't have much interest in some bald dude sitting in a chair, giving orders to a tall bearded guy.  I was much more enamored of Jedis dive-bombing giant space stations and lightsaber dueling over windy chasms.  When I reached high school, I felt like it was a little late to hop on the Enterprise bandwagon.  I suppose I was alienated by the size of the Star Trek world.  I didn't know the different classes of Federation vessels.  I didn't know which way the Captain's toilet flushed.  And, I thought Klingon sounded like that one time my brother ate bad tenderloin and blew serious chunks.

One day, Star Trek made sense to me.  After college, a family member was in the hospital, and it was some pretty dark stuff.  Moping at home, I turned on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.  All my Trekkie friends told me this was the worst of the movies, but I thought I could do with a laugh.  Yeah, a chuckling Vulcan is pretty ridiculous. Wait, they're searching for God?  Eesh.  Still, I was surprised to find that I was enjoying myself.  What's more, I was genuinely moved.  Suddenly, crazily, I had made my own relationship with Star Trek.  What got to me?  What melted my heart to the adventures of the Enterprise?  It was the trinity of Kirk, Spock, and Bones.  The love among and between these characters was infectious.  I don't mean they had crabs or anything. . . I mean that I was touched by these three guys . . . wait, that still sounds bad.  For real, their relationship was a light during dark times, and I'll be forever grateful for that.

I continued to ride the Star Trek train with JJ Abrams' first Star Trek film.  I was impressed by his reboot of the franchise and I thought that he balanced well the big-budget action and character development.  The origin story of the Enterprise was exciting, funny, and truly breathtaking.  I'm sorry I cannot say the same for Abrams' follow-up, Star Trek Into Darkness.

For the most part, I like JJ Abrams as a director.  After watching Super 8, I can clearly see that he wants to be the next Steven Spielberg. That's fine with me.  His admiration for the great director serves him well.  Like Spielberg, Abrams has a strong grasp of widescreen filmmaking.  He knows how to fill the screen with detail and movement while still drawing the eye to the important aspects of the frame.  He does go a bit haywire with the Steadicam and lens flares, but he sure can compose a beautiful and effective shot.

Visually, Abrams is in great form with Star Trek Into Darkness.  All of the action scenes are amazing.  There is a long shootout on the Klingon planet that feels like a mix between John Woo and Walter Hill.  It's visceral and fun, with plenty of unique flourishes.  In one scene, Kirk free-falls through space, dodging some rusty space debris.  I'm pretty sure I played that level in Dead Space, but it sure looks cool on the big screen.  All the vistas of alien planets as well as a futuristic San Fransisco are sharp, detailed, and epic.  If I were watching the film as twenty-five separate scenes, I'd have no problems.

Ultimately, the film feels like climax, after climax, after climax.  Kind of like me in the bedroom . . . sorry, that's gross.  There are no narrative through-lines, so it's not clear if we are at the beginning, middle, or end of this story.  It's just big explosive scenes followed by more big explosive scenes. I can't really blame Abrams here.  He was working with screenwriter Damon Lindelof.  In my opinion, this screenwriter is singlehandedly killing off the Classical Hollywood film script.  Gone are the days of clear character objectives.  Say goodbye to the three-act structure.  Who's the villain and what does he want?  Who cares!  Lindelof and many Hollywood screenwriters today are more interested in twist and turns than in logic and motivation.  In Star Trek Into Darkness, the character arcs are five minutes long.  For Lindelof and co-writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman, there is no such thing as a slow burn.  One minute Kirk is militaristic and vengeful;  the next he's seeing the error of his ways.  The characters have realizations and catharses, but the film doesn't earn them.  It's insane.  Seriously, I'd love to see Robert McKee in a room with these three screenwriters.  He'd bust them up.

While the actors don't have much to work with, they still give some strong performances.  Zachary Quinto is funny and charming as the cold, calculated, yet lovable Spock.  Chris Pine smiles and winks as he stares death in the face.  Zoe Saldana actually makes Klingon sound sexy and less like my sick brother.  I also love Karl Urban as Bones, even though he doesn't have much to do here.  And, for real, it's great to see Peter Weller back at it.  Robocop as a Starfleet Admiral?  I'm in. I'd watch that guy read the phone book.

The best part of the film is really Benedict Cumberbatch.  This guy just showed up out of nowhere two years ago and now he's a cultural icon.  My Mom's even part of his fan club, the Cumberbitches.  Hey, I get it.  The guy made Sherlock Holmes culturally relevant, and he looks like a boss in a long, black coat.  As John Harrison, the film's villain, he's having a great time.  He goes Statham on a lot of dudes and rattles off some truly menacing dialogue, biting at every consonant.  Even though I'm not sure why he's doing anything, he's fun to watch.  Thanks, man.

In the end, it's all too much.  On one hand, a lot happens. On the other, I couldn't tell you the story if I tried.  Like most Hollywood sequels today, Star Trek Into Darkness follows the motto "More, Bigger, Darker."  This worked for films like The Dark Knight and Skyfall, but they had strong, crisp screenplays.  There sure are more explosions in Star Trek Into Darkness, but much less story and character.  The film really doesn't trek anywhere.  It spins in circles and, eventually, crashes to an end.  Hey, I just wanted to spend two hours with my Enterprise friends.  Oh, well.

The Great Gatsby

When you're 29 and single, you go on a lot of first dates.  Well, a few.  Actually, it's been a while.  God I'm lonely...  Anyway, on these rare dates, the dinner conversations vary in subject but usually involve movies.  You can tell a lot about a girl by what movies she likes.  I've been caught many times scoping out a girl's DVD collection. There was this one zookeeper who had only Disney VHS's and Colin Farrell movies.  Also, did I mention she had four cats and they were all named after Colin Farrell characters?  Yeah, I got out of there fast.  To be fair, I'm sure I've scared off a few women with my large collection of slasher movies.  Their loss.

Still, I've made plenty of connections based on shared love of a director or star.  There was one girl who actually liked Dolph Lundgren movies.  I probably should have married her.  Oh well.  When I ask most of my dates what their favorite film is, I hear a few answers repeated, again and again.  There's the inevitable How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.  I get that one.  McConaughey is 100% beefcake.  Love, Actually?  Great romantic comedy.  Pretty in Pink? Molly Ringwald is my girl.  There is one film, however, that sends me running: Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge.

I saw Moulin Rouge when I was in high school.  At that time, I was involved in a lot of musical theatre, so I went with the flow and did my best to enjoy the film.  Seriously, a musical theater high schooler saying he doesn't like Moulin Rouge is like a film Master's student saying he can't stand the work of Stanley Kubrick.  Don't worry, I love Kubrick.  Now that I'm out of high school and not singing Rodgers and Hammerstein anymore, I can admit how I feel about Moulin Rouge.  It's ugly, garish, and poorly made.  The visuals give me a headache and the popular song mash-ups give me a wicked vertigo attack.  Following up Moulin Rouge with the even worse Australia cemented Baz Luhrmann as my least favorite working director.

I tried my best to go into The Great Gatsby with an open mind.  I suppose that's every critic's challenge— to go see a movie you don't want to see and look at it as objectively as possible.  Well, I'm shocked.  This gaudy gem of excess is Luhrmann's worst film yet.  Who thought to greenlight this film?  Asking Baz Luhrmann to direct The Great Gatsby is like asking Michael Bay to direct Moby Dick.  Although, it would be cool to see The Rock as Captain Ahab and Shia Labeouf as Ishmael.  Wait, never mind.  That's a terrible idea.

As usual, Luhrmann places great emphasis on the visuals.  I won't lie; the guy can achieve some striking, beautiful images.  There is no control to these images, though. The visuals are so sugary, I'm worried I might develop diabetes.  I feel as if I just ate a five-pound bag of Reese's Pieces.  Luhrmann took the Gilded Age a bit too literally, so everything shines and glitters like some priceless metal.  The majority of the film is also shot in soft focus, probably to give it a Classic Hollywood aesthetic.  This effect grows old quickly and makes the eyes heavy.  I didn't fall asleep, I swear.

How could I fall asleep?  The film is so loud.  The images are loud and the music is loud.  Instead of using original musical pieces from the 1920s, Luhrmann's employs more of his beloved mash-ups.  The techno version of the Jitterbug is true cacophony.  The soundtrack is atrocious and filled with contemporary Rap music.  In an attempt to be hip, Luhrmann sabotages his audience's immersion into the film.  These modern songs are so jarring, I felt kicked out of the story.  I declare, watching flapper girls dance the Charleston to Kanye gives me an anachronistic headache.

As in his other films, Luhrmann seems to have more of an interest in sights and sounds than character and narrative.  From the first frame of the film, the acting is stilted and flat.  Tobey Maguire, who can be quite decent when directed well, turns in a poor performance.  His voiceover and narration are laughable and are made all the worse by the fact that he is reading from Fitzgerald's book.  I'd rather hear Kevin James read James Joyce.  Well, maybe not.  Joel Edgerton, an actor of great skill, is wasted in the film.  He barks and drinks and plays a really bad guy.  Even Carey Mulligan is disappointing.  The actress I loved in Never Let Me Go and Drive plays a boring, doe-eyed Daisy.  It's very embarrassing.

Leonardo Dicaprio does his best to fill Gatsby's shoes.  Physically, he looks the part, with seersucker suit and swept back hair.  If the film were silent, it might be believable.  However, once Leo opens his mouth, it all falls apart.  As usual, Dicaprio is very intense, but this doesn't work for Fitzgerald's titular character.  I don't remember Gatsby yelling and crying in the book, but he sure does a lot of both here.  He also finishes every sentence with "Old Sport."  True, this is part of the narrative but it becomes annoying after its fiftieth utterance.  Like Luhrmann, Dicaprio seems to be yelling, "I'm Jay Gatsby!  I live in the 1920s!"  Dicaprio's ham-fisted acting mixed with Luhrmann's ham-fisted directing makes for cinema's first ever ham-handshake.

The director luckily had a brilliant book on which to base his film.  Even when the film is ugly and laughable, it is somewhat easy to shut out the noise and just watch Fitzgerald's evocative tale.  Still, it doesn't feel like the director read the same book that I read in high school.  Luhrmann read the book and saw a tragic romance.  I read it and saw a critical look at American ambition.  The film misses a real opportunity to make the film relevant today.  Financial corruption and misled ambition are daily themes in The Wall Street Journal. However, Luhrmann draws no connection to our contemporary world.  Well, he did put the Rap music in...

There is no connection to contemporary America because Luhrmann's 1920's America isn't real itself.  Luhrmann doesn't make period pieces; he makes Science Fiction.  The amount of computer effects mixed with the over-the-top set and costume design make Gatsby feel like a Steampunk comedy.  Fitzgerald's book is a quiet book with loud ideas.  Luhrmann's film is a loud film with no ideas.   I'm sure some Luhrmann fans will enjoy this film.  I'm just saying that if a girl mentions it on a first date, I'm going to the bathroom...and sneaking out the window.