In which I wind up as apparently one of the lonely dissenters saying that, no, the new “Star Trek” is NOT in fact all that good.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/embed/721
HARD LINK: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/721-MovieBob-Reviews-Star-Trek

I will say, though, that it provided plenty of material to make reviewing it a good deal of fun. There’s few things worse than a movie that’s both dissapointing AND dull.

Lost amid the shuffle as people dashed to theaters to find out if “Wolverine” was as bad as it looked or worse was this well-intentioned mid-budget gem, a semi-indie animated space opera retrofitted into a 3D release as counterprogramming. It’s an imperfect film that shoots a little too high for it’s own good, but fans of solid nuts-and-bolts oldschool science fiction oughtn’t miss it consider how poorly this summer is shaping up for genre fans.

When I say oldschool I mean it: Despite the shiny CGI rendering, the story and setting is the exact type of stuff you’d expect to see thumbing through an old Pulp anthology with “Amazing” or “Astonishing” in the title. It’s all set in and around Planet Terra, home to a race of tadpole-like floating aliens living a nominally-naturalistic existance under the benevolent rule of Elders who’s only big rules seem to be “no unaproved technological advances” and “don’t go near the Forbidden Place” (Yeah, that’s goin’ EXACTLY where you think it is, but try and act surprised anyway) which are enough to mildly-chaffe our principal hero, mechanically-inclined tomboy Mala. In any case, Terra finds itself under invasion – and, subsequently, outright attack – by spacefaring humans. These, we learn, are the last survivors of Earth – wiped out ages ago in an intergalactic Civil War and now roaming space in a deteriorating mega-ship. Deteriorating is the key word, here: They’re running out of resources, and the only available planet that can be properly colonized is, well… guess. Problem: Terrans and Humans don’t breath the same stuff, so “terraforming” Terra means bye-bye for the natives. This means war, with Mala and a human fighter-pilot she rescues from a crash (shockingly, that DOESN’T go where you think it’s going) are caught in the middle of it.

So, the story isn’t exactly original, but it plays it’s well-worn hand straight and keeps the details fresh enough to mitigate the creakiness. The fact that ALL of the characters are smartly written and well-rounded makes a huge difference: The Terran Elders AREN’T religious-nut jerks… they’re good guys who’re somber about their decisions and practical in their motivations – when the citizens leap to the conclusion that the humans are “gods,” The Elders cooly inform them that, no, they are invaders and we’ve got a fight to prepare for. Jim Stanton, the main human hero, stays believably conflicted about his place in the unfolding war but also retains a military-man’s sense of duty. The principal villian – a human general who’d rather conquer Terra straight-on than try and negotiate a third way – is appropriately rotten but not a one-dimensional monster; there’s an element of wounded weariness that suggests he really does believe he’s doing the right thing in the long run (“If I sin, future generations will judge me; but without me there won’t BE any future generations.”) although he does have a SPECTACULAR “oh you bastard!” moment when we come to the expected “who’s side are you on?” breakdown. The bulk of the humans AND the Terrans are both played as decent people trying to do the right thing, which puts a darker than usual twist on the big 3rd-act dogfight where, for a change, every death (and there’s plenty) seems tragic and futile – there’s not a “gotcha, sucka!!!” takedown in sight.

It’s even missing the expected preachiness about the futility of war or broad eco-themes: There’s no “space-Ghandi” moment of passive-resistance for the Terrans, nor some mystical “fix” for all the killing. When push comes to shove, the Terrans take to warfare and it’s attendant technologies with gusto and do a fine job at going all Ewok on Earthforce’s ass. “War is not the answer?” Not here, here it does the job just fine… it’s just not super-happy about it.

Ultimately, the film falls short of it’s own ambitions. It’s a little too short to cram in all the big ideas and details it wants to, and while the Terrans are pretty interesting from a design standpoint (rarely has a “good-guy” alien race been so decidedly non-human… they don’t even have LEGS!) the humans are a little too animated-looking (think “Team Fortress 2”) for their own good. And, of course, being a youth-targeted film it probably wraps up a bit too tidy.

Still, those are minor quibbles. In the places that COUNT this is a fine film and easily one of the best REAL sci-fi stories to hit theatres in a long time. It’s a movie that really deserves your attention, much moreso than most others out right now.

Now that we’ve had time to absorb just how badly “Wolverine” sucks (99% of people who actually care if it was good or not went before Sunday) and the more-important “is the movie any good?” objective review is out of the way… now for the nitpicky movie-geek stuff regarding all the things that just don’t make sense.

This of course comes with a hellaciously big SPOILER WARNING!!!

Anyway…

-Allowing for the sake of argument that pre-surgery Wolverine’s bone-claws can be chalked up to an outgrowth of his accelerated healing powers (i.e. if his body can regenerate cells and tissue so quickly, it can also rapidly-generate bone growths) where exactly do they “go” when he’s done with them? Do they fall off? He can’t just absorb them back in – the matter would have to go somewhere.

-Speaking of claws, why would coating his main skeleton with metal cause his claws to take the shape of perfectly set, filed and weighted knife-blades?

-For THAT matter, if his claws are biological WHY do we see the blades set into his forearms on a spring-and-hinge system in his x-rays in “X-Men?”

-Given that the story basically “reveals” that the infamous Three Mile Island disaster was actually a cover-up for the damage caused during a brawl between Wolverine, Sabertooth and Weapon XI, that places the events of this story in and around about 1979. Given that, where did Stryker get all his brand-new looking computer tech? (His team’s guns and other gear also look pretty post-90s, overall.)

-The opening scene’s subtitle informs us that young-Wolverine’s family’s estate is in “Northwest Territories Canada” in (IIRC) 1864. The country we call Canada did not exist by that name until 1867, and the Northwest Territories weren’t PART of it until 1870.

-No one in this film calls Victor Creed “Sabertooth,” but that was the “real name” of the Sabertooth encountered in “X-Men,” so it stands to reason that this is the same guy. He never brings up that Wolverine is his brother in that film, though you’d imagine he’d be surprised to see him after all this time. Now, maybe he ALSO got shot with a magic amnesia-bullet at some point, fine… but don’t you think this connection might’ve come up when he and Toad were having their minds looked-around-in/controlled by powerful psychics (or am I misrecalling that part?)

-Evidently, Silverfox’s powers of psychic suggestion are so strong that her “orders” are still in effect at a range of what would have to be hundreds of miles AND after her death. If so, why is Stryker spending so much time making a remote-control ninja frakenmutant when he has someone already in his employ who can turn ANYONE into an unquestioning soldier/assassin/whatever by tapping them on the shoulder?

-If Emma (Frost?) Silverfox’s skin turns into literal diamonds – the hardest substance on earth – couldn’t she have slipped her cage any time by simply dragging her hand back-and-forth across the bars really fast? It’s not like any WEAPON they have can harm her.

-Professor X contacts young Cyclops while he’s IN Three-Mile Island and picks him up there, which means that both of them know that the “meltdown” was actually a mutant fight. Wolverine, though he’s lost his memory, is ON said Island when he wakes up and must at least know he was “on hand” shortly-after and likely during whatever went down there. Apparently, the “coincidence” of this has never once come up between these three men when they meet again years later; and somehow I doubt “the first thing I remember is waking up in the remains of 3 Mile Island” would NOT be mentioned during his various psych-sessions at X Mansion.

-Agent Zero has the mutant power to rip-off scenes from “Equilibrium,” which makes him a master gunfighter. He employs these skills when sent to hunt a freshly-escaped Wolverine. During said hunt, we eventually know that Stryker already has super-special bullets that can both pierce Wolverine’s skeleton AND give him amnesia. Agent Zero is NOT using these bullets because…?

-How did they actually convinced him that Silverfox was dead, since his feral senses of hearing and smell would tell him IMMEDIATELY that her heart was not stopped and that it wasn’t her blood.

-Weapon XI/Deadpool’s optic-blast can cut through solid stone AFTER he has been beheaded, but it doesn’t go all the way through Victor Creed?

– Young Cyclops is blindfolded the whole time and never actually sees Wolverine, fine. But all the OTHER kids who go off with Xavier alongside him DID. You’d think at some point he’d ask about how the cages got opened, and that one of the dozen or so others would mention “gut with knife-hands did it,” yet this never comes up when he meets Wolverine again as an adult?

…did I miss any?

Short version: This movie is dogshit. Nothing interesting happens, the screenplay is wall-to-wall formula, the action scenes are tepid, the whole production is shoddy and cheap-looking, the surprises are nonexistant, the acting is universally terrible. It’s almost a perfect-disaster… a COMPLETE waste of time.

Ohterwise, let’s take care of this in bullet-list form, because I’m too tired and annoyed to write flowery paragraphs.

– ALL the stuff that might be interesting: Wolverine’s actual age, his birth name, his original identity, his real relationship to Victor “Sabretooth” Creed? His service in the Civil War, WWI, WWII and Vietnam? That’s all zipped-through in the opening credits; about 5 to 10 minutes total. Rest of the film is a series of boring action scenes expanding on stuff we were already told in the first two (good) X-Men movies.

– For the record: It’s every bit as bad as X3, probably much worse in some respects.

– Yes, there’s lots of famous Mutants running around in the margins, but almost no one gets named or nicknamed. It’s just weak fanservice to try and distract said fans from how shitty the movie is.

– Speaking of fans… holy shit, Marvel is going to be appologizing and/or “it wasn’t us”-ing to Deadpool fans for YEARS after this. I can’t remember the last time I saw a character THIS abused in a franchise film.

– The “explanation” for Wolverine’s eventual amnesia is just about the dumbest thing thats ever been introduced into the X-Men movies, and I’m including the mutant-making machine in #1.

– Memo to Hugh Jackman: If you can’t muster the enthusiam to act-in OR produce WELL a “Wolverine”/”X-Men” movie, step aside. I know, I know, every big actor needs a foundation to hold up the less profitable stuff he REALLY wants to do and Wolverine is the only character you’ve ever had boxoffice success with but… sorry, you’re lack of interest is showing and you’ve produced and starred-in an utter turkey.

– It genuinely pains me to say this, but: Let this be the end of it. Fox clearly has no ability or inclination to make a good film in this series with a Bryan Singer around to steer the ship, so let it end now. Don’t bother with further “origins” films, because it’s now clear that they will suck. Let it go, let it die and hopefully let the rights revert back to Marvel who MIGHT be able to salvage this dead weight. Too bad, too…. TWO of these movies were friggin’ great.

EDIT: By now, almost everyone has heard about the “multiple bonus scenes” business, i.e. that the final “stinger” scene after the credits differs from screen to screen (NOT the short scene that comes in the middle of the ending credits.) MOST people are seeing an ending setting up Wolverine being in Japan for the sequel (which at this point I’d be really surprised to see happen) but SOME prints are running with an alternate bit that’s supposed to mitigate the (literal and figurative) butchering of Deadpool. The Deadpool stuff was, I’m told, NOT on the leaked work-print, so how much ya wanna bet THAT’S the “scenes that needed to be finished”?

“Fighting’s” comically on-the-nose title is the only remotely interesting thing about it. It’s a completely predictable story, acted-out with stock characters, uninterestingly shot and punctuated by boring action scenes. It’s a case study in why similarly low-rent films of the past tended to crank ONE element (usually the violence, the sex or a hot-button “hook” theme) up to eleven for saleability, earning the moniker of “exploitation films.”

The good guy is Channing Tatum (still well-ensconsed in his niche as the “teen hearthrob for girls who men who look like, well, men”) as a homeless(?) Southern dude selling bootlegs in NYC and getting into impromptu street fights with the other riff-raff. Said fights are observed by a pro-hustler (Terrance Howard) who scoops the kid up and introduces him to the world of bare-knuckle street-fighting for cash. You will be unsurprised to learn that the film follows them through a series of fights in various colorful (and escalatingly-wealthy) neighborhoods against area-appropriate opponents (a Japanese hotel/brothel’s champion is… A KARATE MASTER!!! Wow! What an angle…) You will be similarly unsurprised when, early on, Our Hero meets the circuit’s reigning champ and – whod’a’thunk it? – he turns out to be an Old Rival from his past who recognizes him and taunts him with vauge allusions to the Dark Secrets of where and how he picked up his prodigious punching powers. There’s also A Girl, who in accordance with The Ancient Laws of such things possesses The Heart of Gold, The Career of Dubiousness, The Child of Illegitimacy and, yes, even The Grandma of Ethnic Humorousness. This is the kind of plotting that’d make Joseph Campbell eat a bullet.

Now, better movies have been made from worse elements – usually by the aforementioned “eleven-ing” of some tangential attribute – usually the action scenes but occasionally the acting. “The Karate Kid” is novelly-characterized enough to make you forget your just watching “Rocky” again, “Ong Bak’s” lead guy can jump nine feet in the air and knee a guy in the forehead, you get the idea. “Fighting,” unfortunately, has delusions of serious drama, so it elects not to show off either.

The fight scenes are uniformly bland, the result of going for a semblance of absolute realism: Most of the fights quickly descend into improvised wrestling on the floor, hits to the face usually end things, etc. This worked out fine in “Redbelt” where the “fights” were quick, brutal punctuation marks for interesting drama. Here? You’re slogging through knee-deep cliches to get to the fights, and then they’re just as dull.

As for the acting… the seemingly upscale casting doesn’t end up doing it any favors. Tatum’s character is basically Lil’ Abner – a stuttering “aw shucks” hillbilly with fists of steel – while Howard is stuck doing his “world-weary-dude-always-on-the-verge-of-bawling” bit; which means that MOST of the film’s big dialogue scenes happen between two characters who mumble and half-start through 90% of their lines. It’s like watching a pair of stroke victims compete in a Brando impersonating contest.

It’s the Plot Outline that Would Not Die: Hotshot young newly-married businessman draws the attention of an Office Hottie, Office Hottie turns out to be crazy stalker, marital problems arise, stalker goes even CRAZIER. This neatly summarizes a baffling number of films, almost all uniformly lousy, descending in an unbroken line from an insanely-overrated 80s potboiler called “Fatal Attraction.” “Obsessed” doesn’t do a damn thing to change up the gameplan, and it doesn’t even have the balls for any murdered pets of even actual infidelity. OH! Except for one thing: Our good-guy married couple (Idris Elba and Beyonce Knowles) happen to be black, and stalker gal (Ali Larter) happens to be white. And leggy. And blonde. Yeah. Well, if nothing else, I’ve gotta hand it to whoever in the production had the solid exploitation-flick sense to get that this seemingly simple wrinkle would be all it’d take to turn an otherwise unremarkable “Attraction”-rip into potential of-the-moment blockbuster: It’s “Oh No She Di’int! – The Movie.”

Too bad it sucks regardless, huh?

Aside from the respectably unexpected note that no one IN the film makes any reference to (or seems otherwise aware of) the racial-tension “hook” at play, there’s not a single new idea or noteworthy moment to be had in what finally adds up to 2 hours of filler in between an “Oooooh….” setup and the innevitable “take THAT, bitch!!!” finale. I’m at least compelled to salute the film for, if nothing else, offering up a rare unironic portrayal of an upscale black couple… even if the “hook” means that they still ultimately give the only interesting role to the white girl. Ah, well.

Structurally, it’s something of a mess suggesting heavy post-production tinkering: The P.O.V. belongs to Elba’s hapless husband character for the entire first two acts, relegating Knowles to a one note second-fiddle for almost the whole story… which, of course, serves to make the third act – where Elba suddenly turns innefectual and is hustled quickly offscreen so that the two ladies can slug it out after Beyonce’s out-of-nowhere metamorphosis into the Avenging Angel of Wronged Black Womanhood (“You think you crazy? I’ll SHOW ya’ CRAAAAZY!” she headbounce-and-spits into the phone) – seem abrupt and out of sync.

No need to bother, really.

Wow. Y’know, I love “Penny Arcade” as a general rule, but I can’t remember the last time I literally laughed out loud at one of their strips the way I just did at this most-recent one:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/4/22/

So… this happened: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30322005/

Short version: Someone evidently thought it’d be high comedy (they were right!) to ask the beaming plasticene f*ck-dolls at the Miss USA pageant questions about complex issues of political policy, which led to gossip-blogging irritant Perez Hilton – acting as a judge in this case – ask Miss California Carrie Prejean about gay marriage, which led the robotically-sexy young lady to give the crowd her best Anita Bryant impression. In any case, she didn’t win, and now someone has decided this is the Culture War Skirmish of the week.

Egh… Perez Hilton versus a plausibly-homophobic beauty pageant contestant. It’s likr the “Destroy All Monsters” of utterly worthless human flotsam. The big “to do” has come down to the issue of whether or not holding this particular opinion “cost” her the crown, something thats become somewhat difficult to deny since Hilton keeps saying (and then un-saying) that, in fact, it did. Oh, dear…

Me? I’d have voted her down, too. Here’s the thing: Last time I checked, the overriding point of this is to pick the best-looking woman in America, yes? Well, to me, answer like that makes her less hot. Plain and simple. Oh, she’s GORGEOUS, don’t get me wrong… there’s no bigger buzzkill in the world than a smokin’ hot chick who turns out to be uptight about sex – it’s always either a tease or a trap. When you hear that kinda “square”-ness coming out of a face that pretty, it means your wasting your time: Woman like that usually gives the best handjob in five counties, sure, but if your looking for anything MORE than that it’s gonna cost you a big-ass diamond and one HELL of a lopsided pre-nup.

Or maybe I just don’t like her for forcing me to even KIND OF “side” with Perez Hilton. Either one works…

Here’s the easiest, most trite-yet-true call any critic will make this year: If you liked (or, at least, “appreciated”) “Crank,” you will feel largely the same was about it’s sequel. It’s as simple as that. The only mandatory note of caution is that, since the first film’s impact (such as it was) had a lot to do with the way it arrived as a bolt from the blue with no real warning as to just how insane and yet alarmingly well-made it was, the sequel is almost by-design going to be ever so slightly less mind-blowing because… well, this time you kinda of know what to expect. Give it credit, at least, for swinging for the fences in it’s attempts to one-up it’s predecessor.

For catchup’s sake: “Crank” was a one-part celebration, one-part satiric deconstruction, one-part adrenaline-injection of yer basic “boy vs. the world” macho action epics; specifically the type in which it’s star – British character actor turned surprise B-movie action god Jason Statham – was/is currently making his bones. It related the purported “final day” of one Chev Chelios, your basic unstoppable one-man-army hitman antihero who awoke to find himself injected with a lethal poison that will kill him unless he kept his adrenaline constantly ramped up – requiring him to use everything from pain, drugs, caffeine, sex and whatever else you could imagine to keep himself alive long enough to take revenge on his “killers.” The story climaxed with what appeared to be Chelios’ spectacular “death,” but you know how action heroes are…

The first film had energy and style to spare, but whether or not it was meant to be anything other than “awesome” is largely in doubt. If you WERE to go looking for a sense of presentation theory, I suppose a good way to describe it would be that the film seems to imagine a theoretical “ideal audience member” for itself in the form of a mad-at-the-world teenaged boy and views itself through “his” eyes: Chelios wreaks bloody havoc through a “people and things who piss me off in L.A.” obstacle course in which everyone and everything has it’s worst foot forward practically begging to be throttled, and our view of it is a multimedia blitz of pounding music, gratuitous sleaze, dehumanizing caricatures of every race, gender and lifestyle to be found and a smattering of video game sound effects.

In the sequel, Chelios is “saved” from his death by a gang of Chinese Triad organ-thieves who want to steal his demonstrably-unkillable heart for mysterious purposes. Outfitted with an artificial heart that requires constant replenishment of electricity, Chev is once again off-and-running across the City of Angels to punch his way to retrieving his “property,” stopping only long enough to electrocute himself in whatever oddball way can be found to keep on kicking. Along with the Triads and a rival Latino gang with it’s own agenda to fight and Bai Ling as what is either the most offensive Asian female character in modern film history OR a bloody-brilliant satire of stereotypical Asian female roles in Hollywood movies, just about every minor character who survived the first film (and some who didn’t) are back for another round as well.

It’s not really a complicated thing, guys: Either you WANT to see likable action lead “Double Dragon” his way through nightmare visions of the day-to-day annoyances of sharing urbania with the rest of humanity with an almost Troma-level disregard for basic decency visualized in a manner so impressionistic it borders on the outright surreality one might expect from a Michel Gondry or Jan Svankmajer piece (at least one fight scene briefly morphs into a 100% different genre and visual style that’s destined to make it a “no, really!” classic) or you DON’T.

One thing I CAN offer in it’s favor is that, for all it’s “fuck-everyone-and-everything” bluster it’s consistently hard to figure which targets filmmakers Neveldine and Taylor aim to skewer and which they aim to (in their own way) celebrate: At one point, a big-bossomed stripper participating (topless) in a gun battle takes a nonlethal bullet to the chest and, rather than blood, we’re treated to the sight (and sound) of liquid silicon erupting from her punctured implants… on the other hand, Chelios’ eventual backup is an army of musclebound, leather-clad African American gay/S&M bikers who arrive on-scene in a thunderingly-heroic manner usual reserved for literal cavalry. If nothing else, it’s a genuinely peculiar blend of screw-the-world misanthropy and quasi-progressive caricature-subversion. There’s certainly nothing else quite like it out there right now.

“The Escapist” has seen fit to give me another spot, this time going through the “Wolverine” trailer a’la the Zapruder Film. Enjoy!

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/embed/684

After watching, check out the ACTUAL site too:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-presents/684-MovieBob-Reviews-Wolverine-Trailer