Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/8/13-12/15/13)

    We Dorks are hardcore.  Mother Nature don’t scare us.  On Sunday night we headed to the Alamo, ‘cause no snow/ice storm is gonna stop us.  That began a rather beastly week for me, though.  Not a lot of sleep was had.  But I had some fun, and that’s what counts in this life.

Shadow of a Doubt:  Though by no means one of the greats in Hitchcock’s filmography, this tale of corruption sneaking into the innocence of small town America is quite charming.  Joseph Cotton is excellent as the charming, but twisted relative who comes to town, full of secrets and bile.  Childhood illusions are shattered and family is tested.  Again, it’s not amazing.  But it’s plenty good.

Design for Living:  This movie struck my fancy so much a few weeks back that I forced co-Dork Brad and his wife to watch it.  I can’t say enough good about its delightfully cheeky and dirty, pre-Code humor.  The actors are all fun to watch and the ending isn’t something that would have possible a few years later.

    Eat it, Nature.  Sweet Smell of Success wasn’t going to be missed because of a little ice.  Lisa, Brad, and I headed out to the Alamo to see this classic.  Sadly, others weren’t so brave.  Great movie that should be seen.

Sweet Smell of Success:  Mean dialog gets tossed around as a bunch of human sharks churn the water in a blood-frenzy of yellow journalism.  The exploits of a vicious little shit as he tries to stay alive in the skuzzy world of New York’s social/political scene.  Nobody is safe from the acid tongue of Burt Lancaster’s Walter Winchell inspired media monster.  Least of all his lapdog, Tony Curtis.

    On Tuesday night, Brad, Lisa, and myself were at the Alamo again.  This time for an advanced screening of American Hustle.  Another good time out at the movies with good company.

I was ready for some 70s fun.

American Hustle:  The 70s come alive in this tonally confusing con-artist flick.  From laugh-out-loud scenes, the film frequently descends into violence haunted threat.  There were moments where a facial expression would make me guffaw, only to expect that the next door to open might have bullets behind it.  The movie constantly feels like it’s going darker than it ever does, but that might even make the laughs that much stronger, that much more nervous.  The actors do a fine job, with Christian Bale and Amy Adams particularly impressing me.  And this is easily the best Jeremy Renner has ever been.  The music was excellent, and like the production design, not as gimmicky as the trailers led me to believe.

Fast Five: What’s big, sweaty, homoerotic, stupid, and wicked awesome?  Fast Five!  For me this is still the first film in the franchise, and I have no particular desire to explore the earlier films.  This heist epic features some of the most excellent stupid dialog, ultra-sincere family talk, and baby oil covered Rock ever committed to film.  I still can not express the surprise I have in myself for loving this movie as much as I do.  It’s one of the most stupidly fun things I’ve watched in a long time, and I have a smile on my face for most of its 2+ hour runtime.

    Wednesday night brought the monthly graphic novel club meeting, and the slings and arrows I’d been anticipating.  I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to be the only person who didn’t like Saga, and I was right.  The other opinions ranged from OK to great, but only I stood as a voice of hate.  And I do hate it so very much.  To me, it’s like country music or The Big Bang Theory.  I know that people like it, but I can’t figure out why.

    Thursday night, and another advanced screening.  This time, Brad and I headed into DC, to E-Street for the newest Coen Brothers movie.  I like trips into the city, especially via Metro train.  People watching is fun.  A good time all round.

Inside Llewyn Davis:  The Coen Brothers sure can spin entertaining and painful yarns about losers.  In the early 1960s, a folk singer and professional loafer is running out of couches to sleep on, out of money, and out of options.  But fate seems determined to teach him a lesson about responsibility.  There are scenes of powerful emotion, be it sadness or mirth.  And there’s a lot of that certain something that brings bent people like me back to the Coen Brothers again and again.

    After all of that, I needed to sleep.  Friday night, I was planning to come home and watch a movie (as always).  Instead, I stared at the wall for a few hours and passed out.  Probably for the best.  And with no plans Saturday, I was able to catch up on my viewing, anyway.

Passion:  Fresh from Cinemax circa 1992 comes this bland, awkwardly forced, sexually semi-charged thriller wannabe about corporate climbers who (we’re told) are really good at their job, but must backstab, betray, and murder their way to success.  They wear business suits and have meetings.  They have video chats and worry over getting that position in New York, so they must be upwardly mobile young women.  And there’s sexual tension.  I know there’s sexual tension, because the movie won’t stop saying it’s there (thankfully, because it would have gone unnoticed otherwise).  None of the characters are well thought out, and why they’re doing what they’re doing is vague at best.  And it all leads to a silly, bordering on offensively dumb ending.  Like Sam Raimi, I feel like De Palma is stuck in his ‘glory days,’ unable to grow as a director, unable to look beyond his once fresh sense of style.  That might be OK if the scripts were better.  But this would be Hitchcock script wouldn’t make the grade in a 70s porno without adding several more visits from the pizza delivery guy.  De Palma, come on.  Some part of me still enjoys the throw-back gimmicks, but you’ve got to do better.  A lot better.  The lady ballet dancer is quite cute, so the movie isn’t a total loss.

Jayne Mansfield’s Car:  A bunch of broken, sad people try to deal with their life and their sorrow.  The whole picture is shadowed by the wars of the 20th century and how each generation dealt with and thought of war.  It’s a great ensemble cast with especially strong performances from Billy Bob Thornton (who also directed and co-wrote), Kevin Bacon, and Robert Patrick as three WWII vets, each with his own war related demon.  It’s a family drama, with lots of awkward humor and fun little twists on expectation.  At the end of the day, I don’t think I connected with the movie as much as I’d have liked.  I think perhaps seeing it in a theater might have helped me be more captured by the glaring Southern Sun and the Vietnam era production design.  But a solid film, if not one I was especially enamored with.

The Living Skeleton:  Uh…OK.  So this movie is steeped in the gimmicky silliness of William Castle, and the moody noirishness of Val Lewton, but with the script of an American International Vincent Price vehicle.  And while that all sounds great, it doesn’t turn out as amazing as it should.  I liked the film, and there are some cool, creepy bits.  But by the end, I was having a devil of a time trying to figure out who anyone was, what they were doing, why they were doing it, and generally what the hell was going on.  It was kitchen sink storytelling, and when the mad scientist appeared…with no foreshadowing, I might add…I spent the rest of the film scratching my head.  Still, the lead actress, Kikko Matsuoka was quite pleasing to the eyes in a sort of Connery-era Bond Girl way (edit: she actually did appear in You Only Live Twice, apparently).

Winter’s Bone:  “Is this gonna be our time?”  Hillbillies got no money, mo problems.  The uglier side of mountain man poverty, drug abuse, crime and such.  Dumb people living small little lives of petty villainy and tainted hope.  The movie is well made, but these people are so pathetic and awful I have a hard time getting in their corner.  I’ve never much enjoyed the company of the terminally ignorant.  The actors do a good job, especially John Hawkes.  But I still found it all unpleasant to sit with for a couple hours.

Movie 43:  It definitely isn’t as consistently good as The Kentucky Fried Movie, or even Amazon Women on the Moon, but this sketch comedy movie does have its moments.  I think the trouble is that the humor is a bit too one-note.  Every sketch is pretty much just a variation on a gross-out bit.  Some of them are really good (neck-balls), others not so much (first period).  A weird number and variety of actors show up in small rolls.  Some are the sorts who will do anything that comes along, but others are A-listers with agents who normally keep them out of stuff like this, and that gives the movie a bit of extra awkward charm.

Genocide:  Atomic bombs and killer insects.  Trouble all around.  Like the other Shochiku horror films, this movie is all over the map, pretty wacky, and ultimately, not all that good.  The insect world is apparently annoyed with our constant fighting, and while it wouldn’t mind us killing ourselves off, it’s afraid we might take it with us.  So, all the world’s bugs are gonna take us out before we can do it to them.  I guess.  While some of the wacky ideas and scenes might be worth lifting for a better film, the overall piece never goes as crazy as it could or as interesting as it should.

    So, that was about it.  Along the way, I started putting some thought and effort into my plans for January, where I’m going to try to finally get an RPG up and running.  I’m still hungry for some Ars Magica, but I’ve got plenty of other games that could and should be a great deal of fun.  I’ll be very curious to see what everyone else will be into.

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (5/19/13-5/25/13)

    On Sunday morning I read Alan Moore’s Skizz.  It was an OK bit of fluff.  Then I read three graphic novels by Jason.  Dang, that guy’s a genius…of some kind.  Between Jason books, I read Animal Man volumes 1 and 2.  Not genius.  And on Wednesday night, I finished Christa Faust’s first Fringe tie-in novel.  Good stuff.  Later in the week I read the Poul Anderson short story The Problem of Pain.  Interesting look at an alien religion through the eyes of a religious human, and how concepts of God and ethics vary.

Surveillance:  “You know how people get out here, Captain.”  Some dark, dark things are going down in Middle America.  At a rural police station, some cops, some witnesses, and a couple F.B.I. agents come together to piece together the facts of a series of brutal murders.  Everyone’s got a secret.  Tensions are high.  And as the stories come together the madness ramps up.  Broken and twisted people.  Monsters hiding behind human faces.  Director Jennifer Lynch came back after a long absence with this gleefully bizarre descent into human horror.  Who would have thought someone could make French Stewart terrifying (‘I’m all about safety.  That’s how I do it.’)?  And he ain’t the half of it.  Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, and a whole cast of excellent second or third stringers help pull this absolutely awful business through hell and beyond.  Actions these horrendous shouldn’t be this much fun to watch.

The Talented Mr. Ripley:  “I always thought it’d be better to be a fake somebody, than a real nobody.”  Can you ever trust someone?  Where does friendship end and dangerous obsession begin?  The dark side of friendship comes to light with this thriller about young, pretty Americans living the ex-pat life in Italy.  A young man who tells lies like breathing goes to Europe to bring a wealthy scion back home.  Things get pretty intense as Tom Ripley drowns himself in the life of Dickie Greenleaf.  But nothing lasts forever.  Tom is a caterpillar approaching his moment, when he will become a butterfly, birthed in the blood of a man.  Patricia Highsmith’s devilishly charming archvillain Tom Ripley begins his career of mischief and mayhem in this beautifully stylish film.  It recreates an era of post-War Europe where the wealthy could live lives of beauty and frivolity that casts its spell to this day.  This is the life that would give rise to the Bond films, to all those romantic capers, to the advertising campaigns of Mad Men.  Light a cigarette, slick back your hair, put on a nice jacket, and get ready for some swinging jazz…and murder.  I’m profoundly impressed by how the film somehow makes you empathize with a murdering nutcase.

The Slams:  Jim Brown crosses the mob for a ton of dough.  He  goes to prison, but it’s OK.  He can do his time ‘til it’s time.  But everybody wants to get a piece of him, or a piece of his action.  He befriends the African Tom Jones while getting in trouble with James Coburn’s giant twin.  Every character actor they could find has been crammed into 91 minutes.  It has some good moments, and I love Jim Brown.  But I don’t like prison movies and this one didn’t win me over.

Calendar Girls:  “Flowers of Yorkshire are like the women of Yorkshire.”  This extremely cute and heartfelt comedy centers around a group of older women who wish to honor a friend in a way that raises more than a few eyebrows.  An excellent cast and a light but touching script takes the viewer through numerous awkward encounters and cheeky misunderstandings.  But it’s all very recognizable.  These are people we know.  They’re the people we’ll soon become.  Mortality, aging, abandonment, grief, and the simple joys of love, friends, and family.  If you’re in the mood for a nice, adult comedy that isn’t just about fart jokes, check this one out.

The ABCs of Death:  Anthologies are tricky.  Any anthology.  Anthology films are really tricky.  This features 26 short films, each based off a word from a letter of the alphabet (D is for Dogfight, W is for WTF?, U is for Unearthed, etc.).  Some are really neat.  Some are really lame.  A bunch are in the middle.  There is absolutely no consistency in tone, style, or strength of content.  Some look professional, others like amateur hour.  Some have some very strong gore or extremely wrong behavior.  Others are just good clean fun.  If you’re a horror fan, you should find at least a few to enjoy, and none of them are so long that you can’t sit through ‘em.

Star Trek:  “I like this ship!”  In 2009, something fairly surprising happened.  A movie came out that was at once a sequel, and a re-launch of a venerable TV and film franchise, that was fun and entertaining while being true to much of the spirit of the original, that brought in new fans on an unprecedented level, yet managed to mostly please a legendarily picky and unhappy fanbase.  By creating an ‘alternate timeline’ the writers were able to go back and revisit the most popular characters of the Trek universe, without being hamstrung by decades of established history that was more bloated, contradictory, and minutia-weighted than the Bible.  Star Trek is an exciting film that manages to balance action, emotion, and humor without letting one get in the way of the other.  And when it ended, the universe was wide open for a really thrilling and new story to be crafted…Of course, after having watched Into Darkness, it turns out the universe was wide open for shoddy rehash.  Sad.  Still, this movie is a blast for all but the most cynical.

They Live:  “I believe in America.”  The Alamo Drafthouse recently opened a location here in Northern Virginia, and I was glad to get out this week to see one of my favorite 80s movies, and one of John Carpenter’s greats, They Live.  It’s filled with amazing quotes, ultra-heavy-handed moralizing, kickass Carpenter scoring, and so much Keith David.  And it has one of the all time great fistfights, which must be seen to be believed.  Just when you think it’s over…it’s just begun!

Furious 6:  It deeply saddens me to say that this movie is not nearly as amazing as Fast 5.  It’s fine, I guess.  But there’s a magic missing; and that magic is the sweaty, Jesus-loving sexual tension that permeated every scene between Vin and The Rock.  Yeah, they had their various dames, but their hearts belonged to each other.  That much was obvious.  This time around, it’s just not there.  Also, the middle gets pretty danged dull.  Where Fast 5 kept the adrenaline and idiocy pumping from moment one, right through to the tag, this one flounders a couple of times.  Still, for extremely dumb, meathead action and gratuitousness, this one should have enough to enjoy.  Some cast members are missing, some come back (from the dead).  And a few get shorted on action and screentime.  But it still has plenty of good bits.  Man, Vin gets uglier and uglier as time goes on.  Kiefer Sutherland and Brad Pitt aged into their weird faces.  Vin has become more and more monstrous, like some terrible Clayface.  It’s awesome.  Look, these movies are hysterical, but part of what makes them so awesome is how serious everyone involved takes themselves.  This is heartfelt, sincere stuff, and it’s terrible…But wonderful.  I don’t give a hoot about street racing or cars in general.  But the stupid caper and car battles make for tasty cheese.

Exorcism:  Jess Franco is like Orson Welles with this turn as actor and director.  Except he sucks.  The story is stupid, the dubbing childish, the gore lame.  Some of the women are pretty and there is wall to wall nudity.  For a Franco film, it‘s not too filled with technical flaws.  The music sucks.  The frustration I run into now is that Franco worked on so many movies under so many assumed names, I keep seeing his films, even though I’m trying not to.  Ugh.

Actress yawns her way through a scene.

Grand Hotel:  “Nothing ever happens.”  An all star ensemble cast (a groundbreaking idea at the time) comes together in this 1932 classic.  Great performances abound, as does the cracking dialog.  It’s funny and sad, with some great romantic moments and some very melancholic bits.  Garbo is beautiful, but I was surprised by how pretty young Joan Crawford was.  I think I’m just used to older, crazier Crawford.  And the Barrymore brothers are fantastic.  Good stuff all around and a must for fans of the classics, and of good movies in general.  I can certainly see why it won Best Picture.

John Carter:  “John Carter of Mars; sounds much better.”  After a hundred years, with many starts and stops, a film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian adventures has finally hit the screen and it’s…well, OK.  The story takes bits and pieces of several Mars novels and reworks them into a kind of bland and typical sci-fi adventure.  Now, there are obviously going to be things that seem familiar to anyone not living under a rock, because nearly every science fiction, superhero, or fantasy film made owes a little something to Burroughs and John Carter.  But it did have something unique, and that magic does not make it into the movie.  Or, very little of it does.  Sadly, the awkward and wooden Taylor Kitsch was cast in the title role, which he doesn’t botch, but doesn’t succeed in capturing.  But the saddest thing of all is how Disney itself became this film’s worst enemy.  After putting up a good deal of money, with the director of one of the best recent science fiction films (Wall-E) at the helm, they spent at every ounce of energy at hand to abandon, flee, and burry the film, obscuring its content and driving away everyone who might want to see it.  I read an article that talked about how Disney assumed a huge audience as a matter of course, and spent its advertising budget not on making people want to see it, but on trying to hide any and every aspect that might make someone not want to see it (even changing the name from John Carter of Mars to the completely lifeless John Carter, in case someone thought Mars might scare someone off), which backfired, making nobody at all give two craps about the film.  That sounds about right.  This is a film I’ve been wanting to see for almost 30 years, and by the time it came out, Disney had nearly convinced me not to bother.  Getting back to the movie itself, while it hits several of the right beats, it feels entirely too restrained, never fully daring to go as crazy as the source material demands.  The growth of Tars Tarkas from closet doubter of his people’s cold and brutal ways to openly sympathetic is a great arc in the book, but here is skipped entirely.  Sad.  Time and again the movie goes a little crazy, but time after time it didn’t go anywhere near crazy enough.  I just wish it had done well enough to warrant a sequel, where they might be able to get more on the right track.  Unfortunately, even though its actual box office take was pretty good, it was considered a bomb for whatever reasons movie studios consider movies bombs.

Fast Five:  “You know I like my dessert first.”  After watching the slightly disappointing Furious 6, I figured I had to go back and recharge the love.  This muscle and steel charged heist movie is as dumb as it is sincere.  And believe me, it’s one danged sincere flick  Plus, you add Dwayne Johnson and you know I’m on board.  Silly stunts, a good villain, lots of muscles and sex-faces.  A frickin’ awesomely terrible and fun movie.  While not as homoerotic as pro-wrestling, it’s certainly got more guy-guy chemistry than Brokeback Mountain, as the touching romance between Vin and The Rock unfolds (“I will find you.”).  Sure, Vin has a hot Brazilian girlfriend, but you know he and his family have enough love to go around.  And the way they work in the obligatory street-racing scene…oh, man.  Though the one in Furious 6 is even more entertainingly stupid.  So much hoochie.  And the action sequences are better done, especially the totally ridiculous finale.

Love.

Rabid:  “I decided to try a little experiment.”  I love this movie.  I love its tone, its look, and its shattered dreams.  Plastic surgeons have developed a new experimental technique (basically stem-cells) to repair catastrophic damage.  When a pretty young woman is horribly injured in a motorcycle crash, she gets the treatment.  It’s a Cronenberg film, so you know things aren’t going to go well.  It doesn’t take long for an armpit vagina to shoot out a spiked penis that infects people with a super-strain of rabies, and she goes completely feral.  That old story.  I especially love the opening.  That rotating shot of Marilyn Chambers is gorgeously moody.  And motorcycle riding sequence that follows is nice, reminding me a bit of the driving footage in Mad Max (not in content but cinematography, I guess).  And that gorgeous, cold Canadian desolation is like a bare tree covered desert.  Every time I see this it makes me a little sad that Chambers wasn’t able to make the transition to mainstream film.  She isn’t an amazing actress, but she has a quality, a sort of open sweetness with just a dash of danger that I think could have been cultivated.  Frank Moore who plays her boyfriend is like the Canadian Christopher Walken…only really bad.  His crying phone meltdown is some epic Shatner level stuff.  The rest of the cast is all over the place, from good to bad.  And there are elements of the final act that could have been better with a bigger budget.  But a good, uncomfortable film.

    And that was pretty much it.  Finally, on Saturday, the sun really came out, though the temperature also dropped back into unseasonably cool.  That’s been the last 6 plus months here in the greater DC area.  Autumn turned cool very early, Winter dragged on too long, and Spring stayed cool until it got super-hot.  And rain all the time.  Starting to feel like I’m back in Maine.  With all the rain, I’ve spent a lot of time indoors, watching movies and reading books.  Now, I like those things.  But I also enjoy riding my bike, taking walks, and going places in the sun.  Hopefully the Summer gets better.  I don’t want to have to look into moving out west.  That does not appeal to me, but if it doesn’t stop raining, I’m going to have to do something.

-Matt

Brad's Week in Dork! (12/4-12/10)

This week I continued my ride along with The Auteur Cast and David Fincher's films.  I could have easily whipped through his entire catalogue, but decided to slow down after Panic Room cuz I don't want to finish before the Cast does.  But I finished last week riding high off of Martin Scorsese's Hugo and I left that theater experience and went right straight to Barnes and Noble for a copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  Read it in one sitting making it the...

BOOK OF THE WEEK!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret:  Written by the grandson of David O. Selznick's (King Kong, Gone With The Wind) cousin, The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a massive love letter to the early days of cinema. More graphic novel than straight up narrative, Hugo Cabret is a quick afternoon read despite its page count and even though I find the base story incredibly engaging I found the writing to lack the emotional wallop of Martin Scorsese's film.  It's missing that oomph that screenwriter John Logan managed to pull from the pages.  A decent kid's book I guess, but it definitely feels like a "kid's book."


MOVIES OF THE WEEK!

The Three Amigos:  "Can I Have Your Watch When You Are Dead?" Maybe The Three Amigos doesn't quite reach the level of genius the way Landis' other genre love letters (The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London) do, but it gets pretty close. A singing cowboy adventure film saturated in silly, late 70s SNL hysterics with a healthy appreciation for the silent film era. But if you can't stand the Martin, Chase, Short brand of humor than just don't bother.

The Game:  I remember leaving the theater after The Game with an incredibly frustrating sense of underwhelment. It was not Seven. I wanted another Seven. In fact, it felt a lot like coming out of the theater from Alien 3 where I really just wanted another Aliens. But with hindsight being 20/20, looking back at both Alien 3 and The Game I've discovered that both films are rather entertaining on their own merits. The Game is a ratcheting, mind screw that sticks it sharply to Michael Douglas' apathetic rich guy jerkwad. Enjoy Life Man! Or The Game will force you to.  It's an easy thriller, but fun.

The Muppets Take Manhattan:  As a kid the only brand of Muppets I was familiar with was Muppets Take Manhattan. I'm not sure why that is; how did I miss out on the brilliance of the variety show or even the original film? Dunno. Ask my horribly abusive parents. But rewatching this incarnation I gotta say it's one of the weaker efforts. The humor is lackluster and the tunes are so-so at best. Sure, Kermit and the gang have an irresistible charm no matter what the script but I expected a smarter outing for Broadway.

Fight Club:  "You met me at a very strange time in my life." The first time I saw this film I walked out of the theater in a rage. I hated, hated, hated Fight Club in '99. I've seen it three or four times now. I kinda dig it now, but I'm by no means in the cult of Fight Club. I enjoy the demented humor of the film, and Brad Pitt's performance as anarchist Tyler Durden is definitely a game changer. I had enjoyed Pitt films before this movie, but it wasn't until Fight Club that I realized Brad Pitt was gonna rule the (my) world.  And the film is slick as hell, David Fincher is firing on all cylinders and there would be no going back for the director.

Panic Room:  I love the idea of the home invasion thriller, but more often than not the genre disappoints with mediocrity. David Fincher's Panic Room is one of the highlights, if not the very highlight, of the tiny subgenre and that's thanks mostly to the odd, but understandable pairings of the three villains (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, and Dwight Yoakam). These guys have no business being in the same room together let alone pulling a heist together, but David Koepp's script does a smart job of bringing the bozos together. Jodie Foster does her Jodie Foster thing and Kristen Stewart amazingly doesn't suck as a child actress. Panic Room sorta marks a new era in Fincher's style with his fetishized digital shots, his eye has never looked cleaner. The road has been paved for Zodiac, can't wait.

Cowboys & Aliens:  The extended edition of Cowboys & Aliens adds some needed character development, fleshing out the relationships between Daniel Craig & Olivia Wilde as well as Adam Beach's domesticated Apache. Craig and Ford feel right at home on their horses and I'd love to see further adventures with these chracters with or without the battle toads. And I still maintain that Favreau's genre mashup is a damn fine popcorn Western with an excellent breed of actors chewing up the scenery. Don't think the film is going to convert modern audiences to the cowboy picture, but fans of outlaw cinema will find enough to enjoy.  It's all about the archetypes, fleshed out by fun character actors like Walton Goggins, Keith Carradine, and Clancy Brown.

Star Trek:  You can't really trust me when it comes to Trek. Of all my dork obsessions, it's Star Trek that I love the most so keep that in mind when I drool my affection all over this film. JJ Abrams and his Star Wars love is just what Star Trek needed in the dark post-Nemesis days of '09. The opening scene depicting the destruction of the USS Kelvin and the birth of James Tiberius Kirk displays an emotional power that hasn't been present in Trek since the climax of Khan and The Search for Spock. And Michael Giacchino's score is outstanding. You're not going to please everybody, but there is enough Trek love on display to keep TOS fans plenty happy. Sure, Eric Bana's Nero gets the narrative shaft but he's a decent enough baddie when he's on screen and this sequel (not a reboot) succeeds in shocking the nearly dead franchise back into relevance.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil:  There are chuckles to be had watching Alan Tudyk & Tyler Labine's hillbillies cause & effect their way through various fratboy catastrophes in this bloody horror comedy of errors but chuckles are only chuckles and I doubt I'll ever pop this film into my player again. The film takes a little too long to get going and when the kills reach absolute absurdity I had pretty much dismissed this film into background apartment noise.

Hanna:  Genetically enhanced super child Saoirse Ronan leaves her father's roost to hunt down her mother's killer and no punches are pulled in this rather brutal PG-13 chase picture. Director Joe Wright takes the simple script and excels with a style exercise--saturation, thumping Chemical Brothers score, odd character beats, and quick stabbing edits. What's the deal with Cate Blanchet's bloody gum obsession? Or the track suited homosexual assassin? Or that hippie dippie globe hopping family? Don't know, but it keeps the proceedings wildly interesting.

Fast Five:  The ridiculous amounts of machismo on display in Fast Five is more fun than it is hilarious and my recommendation is to just roll with an overly sweaty Rock beating down Vin Diesel rather than pick at the silly--yep, the fifth entry in the Fast & Furious franchise finds new life with even more monstrous crack ups and drug fueled bank heists. And I absolutely love the team building exercises between all the hyper-real characters collected over the series and I'm looking forward to the inclusion of more characters in the sixth film.

The Lady Vanishes:  It took a little while for me to get involved, but once I got to know the quirky cast of Brit eccentrics on board the mystery train, The Lady Vanishes became a cute comedy-mystery that obviously shows off Hitchcock's cinematic brilliance. When Dame May Whitty seemingly vanishes into thin air, Margaret Lockwood & Michael Redgrave turn amateur detective in an attempt to uncover a government conspiracy. It's all quick dialog and budding romance and The Lady Vanishes succeeds in drawing you into their polite foreplay.

Cape Fear:  "There isn't much to do in prison except desecrate your flesh." If you dismiss his supporting turn in Jackie Brown, Cape Fear was the last time that Robert De Niro really knocked a performance outta the park. His Max Cady is a Monster. He's Bram Stoker's Dracula. He's the Creature From The Black Lagoon. A focused, determined walking nightmare who erupts upon Nick Nolte and his family; engulfing the weak husband's world and as his swamp of hate begins to overtake him it forces the lawyer to discover The Hills Have Eyes within.. too little too late maybe. It's a scary, scary movie. Intense entertainment and it's impossible not to notice the sick glee of film sponge Martin Scorsese, relishing in the artificial joys of pulp cinema.  And that Elmer Bernstein/Bernard Hermann score...holy cow is that some powerful stuff.

--Brad