Captain's Slog: Stardate Summer 2016

Year: 2016

Director: Justin Lin

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban 

Run Time: 2 hours 2 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. I have never seen a single episode of any Star Trek series. Hardcore sci-fi fandom is a little above my pay grade. However, I have seen J. J. Abrams’ 2009 lens flare expo Star Trek, so I feel perfectly capable of reviewing Star Trek Beyond, the reason I’ve gathered you here today. However, I’m not certain Star Trek Beyond is capable of being reviewed, because it’s the most Movie movie I’ve ever encountered.

It might as well be called Captain Whiteguy and the MacGuffin Adventure.

Directed by Justin Lin of the Fast and/or Furious franchise, for the first time in this new continuity the screen is actually visible, but you kind of wish it wasn’t. Or at least, you don’t need it to be, because every beat is exactly as predictable and nonsensical as every other sci-fi/fantasy adventure in the past 40 years. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is getting weary of space travel, probably because he still doesn’t have a  love interest, and this film is all about slam-jammin’ forced romances into every nook and cranny. 

He is considering stepping down and letting Commander Spock (Zachary Quinto) take the lead of his crew: sassy doctor Bones (Karl Urban), visibly bored Spock love interest Lt. Uhura (Zoe Saldana), outrageously Scottish engineer Scotty (Simon Pegg, who also co-wrote this film), totally organically gay pilot Sulu (John Cho), and I’m-not-actually-sure-what-he-does Chekov (Anton Yelchin, may he rest in peace). But before Kirk calls it quits, he’ll go on One Last Mission.

Guess how that goes. The USS Enterprise is dealt a devastating blow by the forces of Krall (Idris Elba) who desperately seeks the MacGuffin they have on the ship for no good reason. They crash land on an uncharted planet and must survive the wilderness, relocate the rest of their team, and stop Krall from wreaking wicked, MacGuffiny havoc on a nearby federation base, which the movie stops dead for five minutes to show us the majesty of, even though it looks almost exactly like an M.C. Escher version of that city from the beginning of Guardians of the Galaxy.

Zoe Saldana was probably having flashbacks.

The Star Trek franchise is finally free of its lens flare prison. Praise Roddenberry! But nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Hollywood. So they’ve replaced J. J. Abrams’ shiny crutch with a truly shocking profusion of camera spins. The frame rotates this way and that like the DP used a Lazy Susan instead of a tripod, even using spinning shots as reactions to other spinning shots. It’s like being strapped to a windmill and it’s massively unpleasant.

A frustrating aesthetic is a bad starting point when your movie is this numbingly generic, because once you break through that crust there’s nothing really worth digesting on the inside. It feels like a story written with a randomized cliché generator (which might be thanks to the dozen or so studios that collaborated on this film), mixing personal favorites like “they’ve been watching us this whole time,” the convenient injury that’s only debilitating when the plot needs drama, and the Big Evil Thing in the Sky over a City, mixed with some Abrams Star Trek standbys like people having long conversations while their ship is being actively destroyed, and ludicrous technobabble monologues split between a dozen people to keep things snappy.

It’s the “celebrity PSA” method of screenwriting.

Unfortunately, Star Trek Beyond opens on one of its strongest sequence, an adventure-of-the-week scenario that depicts Captain Kirk doing his best Jason Bateman impression in a silly popcorn movie diplomatic mission. From here, you would assume that the movie will be full of frothy summer fun, but it quickly devolves once more into dour, self-serious didacticism. That unabashed goofiness returns in spurts, especially in the interplay between Spock and Bones (the only time Quinto is given anything to do other than being the film’s conduit for mourning Leonard Nimoy), but for the most part Beyond is just one more plodding downer in a summer heavy with them.

It finally loosens up for a pair of decent action sequences in the preamble to the finale, and the heavy-handed climax does do some fun (if geographically vexing) things with antigravity, but it’s too little too late for a film that already had a slippery grasp on merely being middling

It’s a thoroughly watchable CGI-laden blockbuster for the majority of its runtime, especially thanks to a charming new character played by Kingsman’s Sofia Boutella, but when Star Trek Beyond is bad, it’s atrocious. The dialogue is so wooden I’m surprised the actors’ mouths didn’t get splinters, and certain scenes are so overloaded with crashing, screeching sound effects that the words are plumb inaudible. But when you’re watching the crew tear through a bundle of half-assed video game levels, I suppose the script isn’t all that necessary.

Star Trek beyond may have shucked off the visually despicable deficiencies of the tyrant J. J. Abrams, but the franchise is left a shallow husk of itself. I suppose it’s too late to warn you away, but man what a miserable move year this is shaping up to be.

TL;DR: Star Trek Beyond is a hideously generic, mildly diverting blockbuster.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 894

Reviews In This Series
Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)
Star Trek Beyond (Lin, 2016)

Mexico Star Theater

Year: 2014

Director: Jorge R. Gutierrez

Cast: Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum

Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Hollywood is making a change. Because it's Hollywood, it's not an enormous change and it's more than a little half-hearted. Because it's Hollywood, the change is driven by utterly mercenary motivations. But also because it's Hollywood, it has stumbled across a realization that, with a little polishing, could change the world of media as we know it.

That world-changing discovery seems like a simple one and it is: Latino people go to the movies. In fact, they go to the movies a lot. Not surprising, considering just how diverse the American population is, though Hollywood prefers to ignore this fact. But studios have finally begun to take notice of this heretofore unplumbed demographic, making movies that cater to - get this - audiences who aren't just white people.

One of the first truly high-profile movies with this demographic in mind was Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, the Latin-American spin-off of the decade's most popular horror franchise. But behind this film lie many others that have slowly been shifting the tides. Which now brings us to one of the first wide release Latino-themed kids' movies - The Book of Life.

Where was this guy when I was doing my Sexiest Animated Characters list?

Book of Life begins with a framework narrative that's essentially useless, but as it informs the aesthetic of the entire film - and oh, what an aesthetic it is - it's only fair to begin there. Mary Beth (Christina Applegate) is a puckish museum docent who takes a gaggle of detention kids on a field trip to a special secret room containing the Book of Life, which is full of stories and legends about Mexico. She uses a set of dolls to tell the kids one of the stories, so the bulk of the film is animated like wooden puppetry - more on that later.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST ACT - IF YOU SAW THE TRAILER YOU'RE FINE The chosen story centers around two mythical figures: La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman) - the rulers of the two underworlds, the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten respectively. On el Día de los Muertos, they make a fateful wager. Xibalba is desperate to escape the realm of forgotten souls, so he proposes that each of them place a bet on Maria (Zoe Saldana), a young girl in the nearby town with two best friends/suitors. Xibalba bets on Joaquin (Channing Tatum), a cocky explorer who lives in the shadow of his valiant father, and La Muerte vouches for Manolo (Diego Luna), a sensitive musician whose father expects him to pick up his family's bullfighting legacy.

Although Maria is clearly smitten with Manolo's fumbling charm and put off by Joaquin's egocentric antics, she'd really rather hang out with her pet pig. But Manolo proves his worth, not quite soon enough after Joaquin proposes. After Xibalba pulls a devilish trick, Manolo is sent to the Land of the Remembered and must find his way back to the land of the living and reclaim his true love.

Although he did snag a great look just in time for Halloween so it's not all bad.

It's a children's film and a legend-based tale so once it settles in, it's quite simple to follow. Parents want their kids to be something other than their dreams, but individuality wins out and everyone learns the importance of being themselves. Boilerplate kid movie stuff, really. It's everywhere but the plot that Book of Life rises above the average family-friendly fare.

I've already mentioned the film's Latino themes, but the truly astonishing part is that it depicts a culture with customs, music, legends, values, and aesthetics much different from our own without being hideously offensive! There are some dubious elements that squeak by (including having only two actors of Mexican descent in the lead cast, a smattering white-culture signifiers for Mexico, and the fact that the entire story is framed by a puppet show put on for some dumb-ass white kids), but overall the film shines as a beacon of cinematic diversity with Mexican director Jorge Guiterrez and producer Guillermo del Toro preventing things from getting too out of hand. 

And even those rough patches are smoothed over with an ample supporting cast including Cheech Marin, Danny Trejo, and Plácido Domingo, along with strong cultural musicality combining banda and mariachi styles with modern pop-musical lyrics and themes. I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see a film presented by somebody other than fussy old white dudes. Their contributions are numerous, it's true, but it's time to let somebody, anybody else take the stand.

And now for something completely different: Protagonists who don't have the delicate complexion of a glass of skim milk.

OK, now that we have the boring but vastly important stuff out of the way, let's focus on how utterly fun this movie is. Regular kiddy movie tropes (an animal sidekick; a Greek chorus) are turned on their heads (an adorable pig is the sidekick; the chorus is a group of hilarious nuns), boisterous characters burst with vividly colorful life, and the music doesn't suck! The great thing about the soundtrack is that it so easily could have drained the vigor from the film but instead injects it with energy. 

The Book of Life tends to parlay in anachronisms, a risky venture that works more often than it should. A mariachi Mumford & Sons cover? Strange but it works perfectly. Acoustic Elvis on a Mexican guitar? Lovely. A Radiohead song? Not so much, but it made sense at the time. The three original songs likewise manage to match this tone of marrying children's musical standards with Mexican instrumentation to blissful perfection. On top of it all, Diego Luna's voice - while a tad rough around the edges - provides the perfect DIY kick to these lovably offbeat arrangements.

All of this rolls into a film that's tirelessly heartfelt and kooky while at the same time buoyantly reveling in Mexican culture to its fullest extent. This is portrayed nowhere better than the animation itself, which depicts rickety wooden figures with grace and artistry, pumping them full of vibrant, colorful, joyous life. The film's portrayal of the endless fiestas of the Land of the Remembered is an explosion of brassy, rich, eye-popping technicolor dreamscapes as far as the eye can see.

And the attention to detail in unmatched in modern computer-animated film. Once you notice how Xibalba's pupils are little skulls or the way La Muerte's candles delicately float around the train of her dress, the film will have you in its thrall completely - assuming you have the capacity for childish wonder necessary to take it all in.

And compared to Reel FX Animation's last feature film - 2013's Free Birds, the step up here is about the height of the Tower of Babel.

And the acting is top notch, especially Diego Luna with a brave, limit-stretching vocal performance and Tatum in yet another pristine comic role and WHY AREN'T WE LETTING HIM DO MORE COMEDIES! Personally, I could do without Ice Cube in a comic relief part, but it's not as intrusive as you'd think.

All said, The Book of Life would be an utter masterpiece if it weren't for just a few minute stumbles. As I stated before, the story is a bit too wooden, overusing hoary thematic tropes. And the post-Frozen quasi-feminism doesn't ring as true as it could considering that Maria still tends to be a damsel in distress. But all in all, in the field of children's animation as well as that of 2014 cinema itself, you can hardly do better than this vivid multi-cultural extravaganza.

TL;DR: The Book of Life is an eye-popping experience of grandiose proportions that doesn't mistreat its cultural heritage.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Absolutely yes. Don't give Ouija the satisfaction.

Word Count: 1328

Awesome Mix: Volume 1

Year: 2014

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For any but the most die-hard comic book fans (*coughcoughHenry*), the Marvel Cinematic universe has been wearing out its welcome. Despite the relative merits or deficits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Thor: The Dark World (this year also overloaded us with another Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men: Days of Future Past), the overwhelming feeling is that of one long drawn breath while we anticipate Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Notice how none of those films are numbered. No easy-to-follow chronology like Iron Man 2 and 3. That's because Marvel knows that if they give us Cap 2 or X-Men 7, they'll tip us off to just how many of these darn movies they're shoving into cinemas and the weariness will set in like a rot. Again, to be clear, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with these movies, merely that the stranglehold of Marvel in American cinemas has been slowly draining the enthusiasm of the public.

Luckily, almost supernaturally, the company managed to transform an almost unknown series into a ringer. It is quite obvious in retrospect that Guardians of the Galaxy would reignite the Marvel craze like no other film since Avengers for one reason and one reason only. They hired an auteur. Because, frankly, nobody cared about the Guardians of the Galaxy comics, director/writer James Gunn was allowed to make a film imbued with his traditional sense of humor (derived from years of writing for the notorious production company Troma and fighting his way through the horror trenches) rather than just dumping out another homogenized and slick superhero thriller.

Also, considering that he is the man who made this happen, he is nothing less than a god.

So, the story. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is an intergalactic outlaw who operates under the name Starlord, abducted from Earth at a young age in 1988 and raised by Ravagers, a roving band of thieves led by Yondu (Michael Rooker of The Walking Dead and Slither), a blue dude with a hella cool magic science arrow.

After some plot happens, Starlord ends up thrown together with a ragtag band of escaping prisoners after stealing a mysterious orb from a deserted planet. These prisoners with their clashing motives and personalities, end up becoming unlikely friends and guarding some galaxies or whatever. 

Anyway, they are Rocket (Bradley Cooper), a wisecracking bounty hunter raccoon, his best friend/partner/house plant Groot (Vin Diesel), an animated tree-being who only has enough intelligence to say "I Am Groot," and Drex (Dave Bautista), a muscle-bound warrior whose race has no concept of metaphor, so he takes everything quite literally to hilarious effect.

Last but (debatably) not least is Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who must have gotten so fit from all the times she had to walk up stairs so we could see her butt), a green alien woman adopted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), this film's obvious sequel tag villain who, despite his vast power and supposed menace mostly just looks like a blue Jay Leno. When Thanos lends her and her sister Nebula (Oculus' Karen Gillan) to the eeeeeevil Ronan (Lee Pace) as assassins, she betrays him in an attempt to obtain the orb he so covets and sell it so she can buy a ticket to a better life.

Any life is a better life with him.

I really don't want to get into the mechanics of the plot beyond the level of character because, let's face it, it's really not important. Everybody wants the MacGuffin. MacGuffin holds infinite power. Bad guy meets with bigger bad guy on mysterious hunk of rock. Stop the bad guy from using it to destroy the galaxy. (I know it's the title, but man what a narrow-minded evil plot. Just one galaxy? Color me unimpressed.) Bing bang boom.

The plot is typical Marvel, but it's the trappings that allow it to transcend as one of the best superhero movies of... definitely the decade, maybe even the century. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And James Gunn can really... say.

Guardians of the Galaxy puts witty humor at the forefront, shoving action and plot into a secondary position (smart, because it is both of these elements that are the weakest in the film - the first thanks to some occassionally haphazard editing, the second due to a certain lack of emotional heft). This is a witty comedy movie with some superhero elements, not the other way around like your Iron Mans or your Avengers.

Because of its ability to exist almost entirely unbeholden to a truly large-scale story, the characters have room to breathe and bounce off one another, providing thoroughly comic entertainment. By which I mean two things, in that it is consistently, effervescently hilarious and that it provides the joy and amazement of experiencing an actual comic book with all the flash and glamour and not-so-thematic bedazzlement that that entails. Although those looking for a more solid thematic throughline or character arc certainly have material to work with, that's not what we're about here.

We are too cool for school by a considerable margin.

With a fantastic soundtrack of 70's and 80's pop songs that acts as both an ironic underscore to a sci-fi extravaganza and a link to Starlord's eternal childhood and connection to Earth, Guardians of the Galaxy really didn't have to work hard to get me on board (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH'M, hooked on a feelin'). And it shouldn't have to work hard for you either, if you're receptive to a wonderful bit of popcorn movie mayhem.

Of course there are flaws. The largely unmotivated villains are too generic to ever feel like a legitimate threat, despite game performances by two wonderful actors. The editing will occasionally slip up and cram too many images together to make sense of a few sequences. There is a tendency to overexplain plot points in the dialogue. Glenn Close is wasted in a weak "point and gasp" role.

But honestly you don't notice any of that when the lights go down and Gunn hits you with the good stuff. This is his first big break to show off his style to the world and he pulled out all the stops, coordinating gags so effortlessly that they hit with the impact of a missed step when walking down the stairs.

And last but not least, the actors are delightful. The movie with be nothing without them, considering how much of the humor is grounded in their characters and interactions. Chris Pratt is the obvious anchor, combining his awkward and adorable Parks and Rec style with an action hero stud body. If, after this, there's not more Chris Pratt in cinemas, I will personally tear down my local theater brick by brick.

Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel are also standouts as comic relief characters that almost supernaturally fail to get on my nerves. The digital animation for both these characters is astounding and their timing is pitch perfect. And Dave Bautista makes you forget he was ever involved in the WWE, a gargantuan feat if you ask me. Only Saldana gives a performance not worth raving about, but in a less-developed, more straight-faced role. You can't blame her for the character. And she does get some great moments.

Anyway. Guardians of the Galaxy. Go see it. It might not be the most important movie of the year. It's not going to change your life or alter your worldview. But if you want to go to the movies and just have yourself a meaty slab of fun, get your tickets now.

TL;DR: Guardians of the Galaxy is a dazzling sci-fi comedy bolstered by impressive performances and an auteur for the ages.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yaaaaaaaas!

Word Count: 1311

Reviews In This Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)