A review requested by Pip, with thanks for contributing to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser. The story goes that J.J. Abrams, along with other chief creative minds involved in the making of the 2009 Star Trek reboot, claimed that one of their collective favorite films in the series up to that point was Galaxy Quest. This affection doesn’t seem to have impeded Abrams & Co. any in […]
Star Trek: Nemesis was built, more or less explicitly, to be the final story to feature the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, trumpeting its overbaked finale-ness in everything from the first scene (excluding a prologue) to the climactic death of a main character which, in best mainstream sci-fi tradition, is implied near the end to maybe be not quite so permanent as all that. It is big and […]
In the month prior to the opening of 2009’s Star Trek, I set myself to the task of re-watching all ten extant Star Trek features. Not to blog about them – a rare movie marathon that I didn’t see fit to document for all time just to prove that I did it – but to refresh my memory after quite a few years without any Enterprise-based space adventures in my […]
There’s not much point at all in discussing Star Trek Into Darkness without employing spoilers, big huge damn spoilers. One of them is a spoiler for something that’s really damn obvious and you’ve almost certainly figured it out already if you’re actually interested in the movie enough to read a blogger’s review of it. One of them is a spoiler for something that’s… also kind of obvious, if you’ve read […]
So, anytime Brad Bird wants to make another live-action franchise picture, it’s all right with me. For Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Bird’s first foray outside of the world of animation, is pretty much great, certainly in the top tier of 2011’s ‘splodey action pictures. On the one hand, this is merely a relief – a genius though Bird might be in his chosen field, there’s no guarantee that skill […]
Insofar as remaking any given 1980s horror film can be rightly said to make sense, it still doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to remake 1985’s Fright Night, a self-conscious throwback whose charms are largely a function of its position in history: it is an attempt to make an old-fashioned, embarrassingly so, vampire picture right in the heart of the slasher boom, and one of the characters […]
How can you begin to fuck up a movie called Cowboys & Aliens? As it turns out, the same way you fuck up Hot Tub Time Machine, or some people think you fuck up Snakes on a Plane (I myself maintain that the latter film was the best possible version of itself): by coasting on the awe-inspiring cheesy awesomeness of the title, and making something that delivers on what that […]
Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: noted mystery-spinner J.J. Abrams cements his status as Major Popcorn Movie Director with Super 8, but another big name is attached to the film: producer Steven Spielberg, in whose specialised breed of suburban-bound family-friendly […]
Let me get this off my chest first: yes, there are lens flares in Super 8. Lots of them. Some of them are in places where they add a dash of beauty or wistfulness, most are not. And even the “good” ones feel like it took much too much work to get them there. One supposes that J.J. Abrams noticed all the hubbub about the wall-to-wall lens flares in his […]
How was May? Enjoyed Thor, I hope? For myself, I’m kind of boggled by the sort of non-ness of the summer season up till now, with the biggest splashes made by two sequels that, when you get right down to it, doesn’t it seem like nobody liked them very much? Or is this just me in a situation where I don’t know anybody who voted for Richard Nixon? Anyway, with […]
Really, do you just love lens flares a lot? Because you know who absolutely gets the world’s biggest hard-on from lens flares, is J.J. Abrams. I don’t know that it’s fair to start up with Abrams’s Star Trek, a massive rejiggering of the megalithic sci-fi franchise, by bitching about lens flares, of all things, but here’s the deal: I don’t love lens flares one goddamn bit, and if the script […]
May, and the official start of Blockbuster Movie Season, is still a week away, but I hope you’ll forgive me for jumping the gun a bit. Incidentally, there are fewer summer movies this year that I’m even vaguely interested than in any other year of my adult life. A sign of worse films, or my growing cynicism? Read on! 5.1.2009The earliest tentpole release ever (it appears that next year will […]
