Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Whatever the anthesis of “cynical” might be – earnest, genuine, or just plain optimistic – Wonder Woman 1984 is that. It’s a bit less prestige than its first-rate predecessor, using the 1980s as lavish set decoration rather than World War I as historical fiction, but it’s no less engaging, even as it goes for broke in the direction of a bit more silly. Indeed, WW84 is possessing of the kind of idiosyncratic confidence that comes when a filmmaker like Patty Jenkins has made the film she truly wants to make, rather than bow to studio meddling (as we have since learned happened in Wonder Woman’s climactic third act).

It’s 1984, and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) has made her way to Washington, D.C., where her job at the Smithsonian brings her into contact with the Dreamstone, a veritable monkey’s paw that grants a wish to anyone who wields it. In ways you might and might not expect, the Dreamstone entangles Diana’s coworker Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), infomercial huckster Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), and Diana’s late lover Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), giving lie to the old adage, “Be careful what you wish for...”

 

I truly loved WW84, breathlessly exclaiming once or twice, “That’s terrific.” I’m aware that not everyone did love it – its fortunes are in decline over on Rotten Tomatoes, for one – and I can’t speculate as to whether the streaming service simulcast does WW84 a disservice, whether the spectacle plays better on a more impressive theater setup. (The Cinema King has no complaints on that front.) What I can say is that I was captivated by the film’s earnest whimsy, its confident suspension of disbelief, and its certainty in its own moral position. There is not much hemming and hawing over the right thing to do, and there is seldom any question that Diana has the strength to do it. Nor is there much self-reflexivity or embarrassment about the inherent silliness of the MacGuffin and the source material, and for that I’m eternally grateful. I’ve long since grown bored with comic book movies that have to point a mocking finger at the comic books. Of course they’re silly; all of this is silly, and yet Jenkins and Gadot are having a blast with it.

 

At its peak, WW84 reminds one of Richard Donner’s Superman movies, leavened with a bit of Indiana Jones, none of it too worried about how the film fits into a larger cinematic universe. As much as I’m a fan of the Zack Snyder DC Extended Universe – and as breathless as I am for Zack Snyder’s Justice League (now rumored for March 2021) – there is something delightfully un-corporate about WW84, by which I mean the film is largely unconcerned with setting up sequels or homaging past films. It’s very much its own thing, content merely to deliver up the continuing adventures of Diana Prince. In fact, the film buckles a bit when it gestures toward Snyder’s “Wonder Woman walked away” metanarrative, as when Diana takes care to dismantle security cameras. It’s a quick perfunctory note, and one senses that Jenkins dispenses with it as quickly as she can at the top of the film because she has her own things to say about Diana.

 

Of course, none of WW84 would work if Gal Gadot weren’t an inspired vision as Wonder Woman. She plays the character with such sincerity that you believe she stepped out of a comic book and onto the silver screen. She continues the bravura work she began in Batman v Superman with the full emotional range we saw in Wonder Woman; Diana Prince can believably swing from dread and resolve into elation over the existence of ice cream. Pedro Pascal, who’s done so much with only his voice over on The Mandalorian, makes a veritable three-course meal out of the scenery as a surprisingly topical Max Lord, while Kristen Wiig’s Barbara Minerva is the sort of antagonist you’d love to see recur in the franchise.

 

I’ve seen a lot of reviews talk about WW84 as exactly the kind of movie we need to clear the cobwebs from this wretched year. I don’t know that I’d take it quite that far – it’s not a perfect movie, but it is a breezy confident romp that does justice to its inspirational main character while not shortchanging an audience who’s coming for thrills and good cheer. For moviegoers who demanded that Zack Snyder’s DC universe lighten up, be careful what you wish for – bright colors and super-camp and parachute pants abound. For me, it’s almost as if Wonder Woman stepped into Zack Snyder’s Watchmen with a smile, and it’s hard to imagine a movie that could be more up my alley than that one.

 

Wonder Woman 1984 is rated PG-13 for “sequences of action and violence.” Directed by Patty Jenkins. Written by Patty Jenkins, Geoff Johns, and Dave Callaham. Based on the DC Comics. Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, and Lilly Aspell.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

We like to say that “the geeks have won.” It’s a victory that’s been called more often than Barbara Stanwyck’s bedside telephone in Sorry, Wrong Number, but each time it feels like geekdom has achieved the unthinkable – be it the smash debut of The Avengers or introducing comics-accurate oddballs like King Shark and Professor Pyg on primetime. In 2018, the geeks won by having a banner year, with three animated superhero films alongside major showings by their live-action counterparts. However you slice it, we can have a productive argument about whether the cartoon with a Spider-Pig was actually the best one – a true win for the geeks.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (finally) introduces Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) to the big screen as Brooklyn’s new friendly neighborhood Spider-Man after a spider bite puts him in a league with his universe’s Peter Parker (Chris Pine). I say “his” universe, for Brooklyn becomes host to a coterie of spider-people after The Kingpin (Liev Schreiber) tears a hole in the fabric of space-time with a particle accelerator experiment. Joining Miles are a shlubbier Spidey (Jake Johnson), Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld), the black-and-white Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), and Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (John Mulaney) – all in search of a way home.

I’ve said in the past that Batman is the greatest fictional character because of his chameleonic ability to accommodate whatever his audience needs – he can be the paragon of camp, the apex gargoyle, a space-age dark knight, or a kid-friendly crusader. When I say that, however, I’m usually not thinking of Spider-Man, for whose comparable metamorphoses Spider-Verse makes a compelling argument. Spider-Verse posits a veritable spider-prism (kids next door, rocker chicks, tough-guy gangsters, wise-cracking pigs, and more), each of whom accesses the central truth of Spider-Man – that with great power, there must also come great responsibility. You can’t run away, you can’t turn your back; your family and your friendly neighborhood are counting on you. For all his myriad forms, it’s hard to imagine Batman in a film like this one, teamwork having never been his strong suit. (Singular dislocation suits Batman better than prismatic conjunction; cf. Batman Ninja, Batman Beyond, etc.)

It’s equally hard to imagine that Spider-Verse works as well as it does. Its irreverent approach to storytelling, layering origin stories in a gag that never loses its comedic punch, helps the viewer navigate fifty years of convoluted chronology with deft precision. (Its comics counterpart, 2014’s Spider-Verse crossover, is comparably impenetrable.) Make no mistake, though; for all its spider-people, Spider-Verse is well and truly Miles’s film, a full origin story for the newest Spider-Man (who debuted in 2011). Here Miles is quite a character, engaging and relatable because of his eminent humanity; he’s shy but gifted, funny and earnest. What’s more, there comes a moment in the film where you’d almost rather he not become Spider-Man because of how well we like Miles and the unique story being told with him; it almost seems a shame to put him in a costume and give him a fairly recognizable super-action narrative. But the exceedingly clever script finds a way to weave that hero’s journey into the story already in progress (including a few, ahem, touching callbacks).

Of course, so much of the film’s success owes to its lanky animation style, delicately exaggerated in the best Tex Avery tradition. The slightly jerky movements and modest design tweaks help divorce Spider-Verse from strict representation and move it into a realm where it feels like anything can happen, where any abstract incursion fits right in (cf. Spider-Ham). Animation naturally unfetters a filmmaker’s aspirations in the way that a comic book page renders all things possible beyond constraints of budget. That’s not to say that Spider-Verse is cheap (its budget has been reported at $90 million), but it’s hard to imagine a live-action film capturing all the peculiar quirks of this world, to say nothing of its technicolor climax or the characters that almost need to belong to an animated world (again, Spider-Ham, but also the monochromatic Spider-Man Noir). I knew I was in for a visual treat even from the trailers, but nothing can really prepare a moviegoer for the first appearance of the massive Kingpin – whose sheer mass cannot be understated. Even this, though, is essential character work; Kingpin’s colossal bulk distorts gravity around him, in the way that his particle accelerator tampers with the laws of physics in order to pull in the objects of his plot (no spoilers, but the script is smart to make Kingpin three-dimensional, giving him a full and possibly legitimate reason for risking the fate of the universe).

As dark as the film can be, wading into heavy subplots about betrayal, disappointment, and loss, Spider-Verse is exuberantly, boundlessly fun. I can’t, for example, point at someone or touch their shoulder without thinking of particular jokes in the film and guffawing my webs off. But the film also tickles my specific devotion to superheroes for its relentless optimism. Yes, the situation is dire, with cataclysmic consequences, but here’s a kid from Brooklyn who stands at the center of this massive web with the power to save everyone, and all he needs to do is figure himself out. What’s more, he has a loving family and a network of friends to help him through difficult times; no matter how isolated he feels, Miles Morales is never alone. Reducing him to “the black Spider-Man” doesn’t do justice to the depth of this character or the ways he advances and perpetuates the legend of Spider-Man without the guilt or baggage of Peter Parker.

I’m not ready to wade into the battlefields of “who did it better?” just yet. (As I get older, I’m losing patience with these pithy ‘hot takes’ that end more conversations than they start.) The geeks have well and truly won when we can have Black Panther and Spider-Verse, when we get a long-overdue Incredibles 2 alongside them and Avengers: Infinity War, to say nothing of Aquaman, Venom, Deadpool 2, and Ant-Man and the Wasp. (Phew!) It’s an embarrassment of riches, not unlike the spider-cornucopia presented in Spider-Verse, with something for everyone and everything adding up to a romping good time. Best of all, Spider-Verse got me to dust off my Marvel Unlimited subscription and queue up a slate of spider-comics to read. That’s how the geeks win.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is rated PG for “frenetic sequences of animated action violence, thematic elements, and mild language.” Directed by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. Written by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman. Based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Brian Michael Bendis, Sara Pichelli, and Dan Slott. Starring Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, Mahershala Ali, John Mulaney, Nicolas Cage, Kathryn Hahn, Liev Schreiber, and Chris Pine.

Wonder Woman (2017)

In a word, wow.

Diana, princess of Themyscira (Gal Gadot), has trained her whole life – against the wishes of her mother, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (Connie Nielsen) – to defeat the god of war should Ares return centuries after his defeat at the hands of his father Zeus. When man’s world, in the form of downed fighter pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), comes to her island home, Diana has the chance to fight the war to end all wars, joining the First World War as Wonder Woman. As she crosses the trenches of no man’s land, she faces Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), the German general intent on avoiding an armistice, and his chemist, Dr. Isabel Maru, alias Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya).

Let’s get the preliminary out of the way up front: I’m perpetually aghast at the fact that it took more than 75 years for Wonder Woman to headline her own live-action feature film, but if that’s time we spent “Waiting for Gadot” I’m almost inclined to say it was worth the wait. Gal Gadot is frankly definitive as Wonder Woman, and I’m relieved that audiences are embracing her as much as she has embraced the role; I look forward to many more films with her as Wonder Woman because it’s almost as if she’s stepped out of a comic book and onto the silver screen. The moments when she’s unleashing her warrior’s fury, backed by Tina Guo’s electric cello theme (thankfully maintained from Batman v Superman), are at once fist-pumpingly thrilling and simultaneously genuinely awe-inspiring.

There’s certainly a meta-level reading here, with Steve Trevor telling Wonder Woman that no one can cross a no man’s land before watching her accomplish just that. In many ways, that’s an echo of all the bigwigs and even audience members who sniffed at the notion that a female-led superhero film could do big business, and here we are, $100 million later. But even on its own merits, the moments when Wonder Woman charges into battle are legitimately inspirational, as is her continual emphasis on personal acts of heroism; for all that Wonder Woman is looking to defeat Ares, she never neglects the personal cost of war, as in the deeply touching moment when she heals a traumatized soldier by asking him to sing. Gadot embodies the character’s unique blend of compassion and ferocity, as well as her welcome sense of humor amid the absurdities of man’s world.

Wonder Woman is unquestionably Gal Gadot’s show, but she’s surrounded by strong supporting characters. Chris Pine is a well-nuanced Steve Trevor, funny and somewhat dunderheaded but never incompetent; previous incarnations have struggled with whether Steve is a patronizing patriarch or an empty-headed buffoon, but Pine finds a way to make Steve capable yet human. The Amazons who dominate the first act are wonderful enough that I’d have gladly taken a ticket for a movie just about them, particularly Robin Wright’s fierce Antiope, and I do hope we’ll see more of Themyscira, perhaps as soon as Justice League in November. And our villains are clearly having a good time playing evil to the hilt; there’s a fascinating backstory to be told about Dr. Maru, while Danny Huston’s Ludendorff takes the occasional chomp out of the scenery in a snarling, vamping performance that manages also to be scary.

What I loved the most about Wonder Woman – aside from the mere fact of its existence and the notion that, finally, others love a DC movie as much as I do – is that it takes subtext from Batman v Superman and literalizes it. We have had to imagine and defer the promise of Jor-El’s prophecy to his son – “They will stumble, they will fall, but in time they will join you in the sun” – but Wonder Woman shows us what that looks like in the real world. The audience who joined me for Wonder Woman was probably the most diverse audience (in terms of age, gender, and race) I’ve seen at a superhero movie, at least in recent memory, and that alone is something to celebrate, that finally everyone understands the power of the superhero, that we see what they can do, and that we’re standing behind them.

Put another way, you go, Gal.

Wonder Woman is rated PG-13 for “sequences of violence and action, and some suggestive content.” Directed by Patty Jenkins. Written by Allan Heinberg, Zack Snyder, and Jason Fuchs. Starring Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, and David Thewlis.

Hell or High Water (2016)

You wouldn’t believe what a difficult time I had seeing this movie. Aside from the fact that the limited release didn’t hit my area for a few weeks, my matinee showing had a problem with the audio, leading me to come back later in the evening. But despite the difficulty in actually getting to Hell or High Water, the experience was all worth it; it’s a first-rate flick, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it up for a few golden statues come early 2017.

Chris Pine and Ben Foster play brothers forced onto the wrong side of the law. In order to save their family’s ranch after the death of their mother, the two have resorted to bank robbery, meticulously planned and carefully precise. Their robbery spree attracts the attention of a retiring Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) and his partner (Gil Birmingham), who aim to stop the robberies – or at least understand why they’re happening.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of westerns, perhaps just because I haven’t seen the right ones, but I’m a big fan of this genre-in-progress, the neo-western, which takes the themes of the western and relocates them into more contemporary trappings in order to continue to ask questions about justice, frontier spaces, and the nation’s long, complicated, and often troubling history. At the same time, it’s also (I think, indirectly) a space where older performers can step back into the genre and reevaluate it and themselves, where audiences can read the frontier’s weariness on the crags of an actor’s face.

You might think that I could very well be describing No Country For Old Men, and you’d be onto something, because Hell or High Water is very much of a piece with No Country. Both neo-westerns take questions of frontier justice into pressing issues of the twenty-first century (there, the loss of the “good old days”; here, the question of economic injustice). Bridges and Tommy Lee Jones are characters who ought to join each other on rocking chairs on the porch of their retirement, wearied as they are by the cases that baffle them. And while there’s no figure of pure evil like Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh in Hell or High Water, there is the same lingering attention to the prairie wastelands of Texas, highlighting the bleak despair of the soul and the relentless persistence of our protagonists, who have only their own codes to which they can cling.

It’s truly riveting stuff, a two-hour trip that flies by despite its fairly small scope and tight narrative focus. The key is the well-crafted screenplay, as precise as the bank heists and wisely funny in a way that the trailers didn’t let on. Pine is surprisingly subdued, given his recent turn as the swaggeringly confident Captain Kirk in Star Trek. Of course, a Jeff Bridges performance is always worth the price of admission, with Hell or High Water somewhere between True Grit and Crazy Heart on the Dude-ometer. His turn as the retiring ranger practically prickles, and it’s the knowing gleam in Bridges’s eye that humanizes the character as we and his partner question why he’s pursing the case so doggedly.

Who knew it would take me through hell and high water just to see Hell or High Water? It’s worth the watch if you can find it, and it’s worth a double feature with No Country For Old Men to really think about where the neo-western is going.

Hell or High Water is rated R. Directed by David Mackenzie. Written by Taylor Sheridan. Starring Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster, and Gil Birmingham.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

I’ll admit to being something of a Star Trek novice, having only seen the most recent JJ Abrams reboots and one or two of the Picard-era films (the latter, when I was too young to comprehend fully that they weren’t Star Wars). It’s a glaring absence on my nerd-bingo card, one I’ll get around to rectifying one of these days. But for now I’m content with the sporadic relationship I have with Star Trek, mostly because the new franchise hasn’t disappointed yet: Star Trek Beyond is the hat trick for the series, an engaging and exciting romp.

Several years into their “five-year mission,” the crew of the Enterprise are feeling directionless. Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is looking for a way out of his purposeless command, while Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Uhura (Zoe Saldana) are having a bit of a tiff over the former’s anxiety about mortality. An opportunity to mount a rescue mission into deep space rallies the Enterprise together, only to find them falling into the hands of the murderous and mysterious Krall (Idris Elba).

Despite my misgivings about the final act of Star Trek Into Darkness, I predicted that the next film would be “a real hoot,” and I’m glad to report that I was right. Even without JJ Abrams at the directorial helm this time (you may recall he was off directing a little film about forces awakening), Justin Lin proves adept at science fiction and keeping the momentum of the film going between action sequences and conversation pieces.

Indeed, the real success of the film is the chemistry between the cast. Of course, it’s been seven years in our world, and the cast really seem to have bonded in that time, approximating the tensions and dynamics of a deep-space voyage. Everyone continues the caliber of work they’ve done previously (save Simon Pegg, who pulls double-duty on screenplay but seems more isolated from the rest of the cast), but it’s Quinto’s interactions with Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy that steal the film wholesale. The juxtaposition of sassy physician with cold logic is something I don’t recall dominating the other two to this extent (Bones was memorably paired with Kirk as POV characters for Star Trek in 2009), but I’d watch a whole movie about these two.

I would have liked to see more of Idris Elba as the antagonist, and while that’s a sentence I usually say about most movies it’s especially apt in Star Trek Beyond because I remember having a distinct feeling near the beginning of the third act that I had no clue what his motivations were. It’s a step in the opposite direction from Into Darkness, where Kirk knew that John Harrison was evil because Old Spock told him so, and Krall’s motivations are abundantly clear by the end of the film in a way that ties together a number of disparate plot threads with surprising aplomb. I don’t quite know how I might have addressed this element without giving away the twist, other than to say Elba deserves more screen time, but it strikes me as a slight tension in the film.

All told, though, the greatest compliment I can pay Star Trek Beyond is to say that it isn’t a poor impression of Guardians of the Galaxy, much as the early trailers attempted to convince us. It is purely its own thing, the first wholly original plotline that doesn’t derive its narrative momentum from the concept of an alternate timeline. In this sense, Star Trek Beyond boldly goes where no Star Trek reboot has gone before, into fresh and original storytelling that is no longer beholden to what came before.

Star Trek Beyond is rated PG-13 for “sequences of sci-fi action and violence,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

Into the Woods (2014)

I had so desperately wanted to begin this review with the fabulous line given to Little Red Riding Hood:  “Nice is different than good.”  Unfortunately for the sake of the pun, Into the Woods is both nice and good, a fine close to what has been another good year for Disney and perhaps the more sober alternative to the relentless cheeriness of the nation’s current Frozen mania.

The film’s opener sets the stage best:  “Once upon a time in a far-off kingdom there lay a small village at the edge of the woods, and in this village lived a young maiden (Anna Kendrick as Cinderella), a carefree young lad (Daniel Huttlestone as the bean-stalked Jack), and a childless baker (James Corden) with his wife (Emily Blunt).”  The curse of a witch (Meryl Streep) sets these characters into a quest through the woods, where they cross paths with Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), a pair of narcissistic princes (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen), and a Big Bad Wolf (Johnny Depp).

As someone unfamiliar with the stage play – and deliberately so, in order to take the film on its own terms – I can’t help but see Into the Woods as another fabulous step forward for Disney in its current phase of self-reflexive reinvention.  Those who don’t know the play might be surprised, as I was, by the film’s clever fake-out climax which delivers the “happily ever after” about forty minutes too early and then dissects just how untenable that ending would have been – warts, discontents, and unfinished business.  It’s smart stuff, the kind of revisionist fairy tale that we’re seeing played out in stuff like the Fables comics and, more closely to Into the Woods, the true-love fallacies of Frozen and Brave.

As for the lyrical elephant in the room, Stephen Sondheim’s trademark syncopated style of “talk singing” isn’t for everyone, and even folks who liked Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd adaptation from a few years back will find Into the Woods somewhat less melodic, governed more by motifs than catchy tunes.  For me, I liked the music enough to go out in search of the soundtrack, if only for the tour de force “Prologue,” a fifteen-minute introduction to all the characters and major plots that also gives us the whimsical eponymous chorus “Into the woods / It’s time to go...”

I like the music, but I’m sure it’s because the performers are all quite charismatic.  I can’t think of many actresses who could sell a line like “I caught him in the autumn in my garden one night!” – but, as the oft-quoted line from Modern Family goes, “Meryl Streep could play Batman and be the right choice.”  Streep, who did Mamma Mia! with more class than anyone expected, lends the Witch an equal dose of class, and she does wonders with the maternal scenes with Rapunzel as well as absolutely killing it in the witchier bits.  I honestly don’t have a bad word about any of the aforementioned cast, although I’ll throw in the two-cents that I really could have used more Johnny Depp.  Touted as a centerpiece of the ensemble cast, Depp only appears for about five minutes – which are captivating, don’t get me wrong, with his vaguely pedophilic Wolf devouring scenery and children in one fell gulp.

I think the reason I fell so fast in love with Into the Woods, aside from the equally captive audience sharing the theater with me, is that the characters are very well-crafted and – tragically, a rarity these days – eminently likeable.  Everyone, from the Baker and his wife to Red Riding Hood, has a story arc, compelling motivations, and at least one ingenious turn of phrase (either by smart rhyme or admirable manipulation of rhythm).  When things don’t go well for them, the audience feels it; when the characters triumph, we feel it even more.  This is a musical adaptation that remembers those of us who don’t already love the story, so director Rob Marshall works extra hard to get all of us swept away by the once-upon-a-times.

And while I’m on the subject of the captive audience, Into the Woods is an effortless crowd pleaser, even amid a somewhat gloomy ending.  There’s something for everyone in here, plenty of year-end spectacle and spectacular performances:  “It Takes Two” is a catchy and slyly romantic duet, where “Agony” is the musical number that’ll elicit the most laughs as the Princes compare male-privilege sorrows.  Into the Woods manages to be self-reflexive without being overtly cynical – “Careful the tale you tell” seems to be the moral of this story, and it’s evident that the filmmakers have been very careful indeed.  What more can I say?  I had an infectiously good time, escapism layered with enough narrative criticality not to feel like a brain-drain.  I’d happily go back into the woods once more.

Into the Woods is rated PG for “thematic elements, fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.”  There’s fairy-tale discussion of curses and creatures, though the film darkens considerably in the second half when a giantess walks the earth and several characters die in emotionally-charged sequences.  The Wolf is played as a metaphor for sexual awakening with pedophilic overtones, while the Prince’s philandering ways lead to serious questions about seduction and fidelity.  All told, though, this is no less appropriate than most of, say, Disney’s late-90s offerings.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)

Is Chris Pine the king of the rebooters?  After helming a very profitable new take on Star Trek, Pine’s been tapped to lead a post-9/11 reboot of Tom Clancy’s “Jack Ryan” espionage/thriller franchise.  Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, the first in what I can only assume is a series, is quite successful and engaging, even if it doesn’t forge new ground in the genre.

The film follows fresh-faced Jack Ryan (Pine), just off a tour of duty in Afghanistan as a Marine.  After undergoing extensive physical therapy and wooing his therapist Cathy (Keira Knightley), Ryan is recruited by Thomas Harper (Kevin Costner) to join the CIA.  Ten years later, Ryan’s undercover work on Wall Street exposes a plot to undermine the US economy, a conspiracy directed by Russian capitalist Viktor Cherevin (Kenneth Branagh).

Branagh pulls double-duty as villain and director here, and I would like to pause for a moment and ask the second question in this review:  when did Kenneth Branagh become a sterling action film director?  Short answer:  Thor.  But Jack Ryan proves that wasn’t a one-time fluke, a suitable hybrid of superhero throwdown with Branagh’s more comfortable Shakespearean swagger.  Jack Ryan proves Branagh a solid director of action sequences, culminating in an immensely suspenseful final hour or so of the film.

As the villain, Branagh refrains from noshing on the scenery and instead opts for cold and unpredictable; it’s a refreshing alternative to the bloviating Bond villain caricature we could have gotten.  Pine is credible as a first-time operative, particularly gifted in a key scene after his first kill, and Costner is a reliable choice for the stern senior agent.  Knightley’s beautiful as ever, though her American accent is a little too on-the-nose valley girl to be entirely believable.

I’ve praised the action scenes in the film, and boy do they deliver.  From a car chase with the threat of gruesome torture ahead to an intense close-quarters bathroom fight, Branagh turns in a film so capable that I’m eager to see him return for a Jack Ryan sequel to see what else he can do at play in the genre.  What I’d like to see more, though, is a little bit of innovation.  As successful as it is, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is very much a paint-by-numbers spy thriller.  The classic beats are all there.  Post 9/11 film?  9/11 motivates character to serve his country.  Female character?  Hostage.  And even though the economic plot is a bit creative for a spy action film, it all amounts in the end to blowing something up.

One glaring weakness in the film is Ryan’s downright lack of a personality.  It’s easy enough to vicariously enjoy the film through him, but we never really get a reason to care about him beyond the unsuccessful pathos of a quick bout of physical therapy.  Pine plays a less cocky Captain Kirk here, devoid of the personality that made Star Trek a worthwhile hero’s-quest narrative.  There’s nothing really unique about his methods, nothing that sets him apart other than us knowing that Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford played him before.  Hopefully the sequel rectifies that and clears up Ryan’s place in the espionage pantheon.

It remains to be seen, then, what kind of a spy Jack Ryan will become.  The economic angle is promisingly creative, but even if the writers fall back on a spy sans personality, Branagh’s capable hand at the directorial till delivers an engaging (if not cerebral) suspense film full of the good old eyeball kicks.

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is rated PG-13 “for sequences of violence and intense action, and brief strong language.”  The violence is certainly more intense than bloody, and much of it deals more with the threat of menace than with actual spurts of the red stuff.  An F-bomb or two gets dropped, but it’s pretty tame in terms of language.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

J.J. Abrams’s 2009 preboot Star Trek (which prequelized while simultaneously rebooting the Shatner era) was fresh and original, tons of fun even to a casual filmgoer like myself, who still doesn’t fully know the difference between a Trekkie and a Tribble.  Four years later, with Star Trek Into Darkness, Abrams retains that vivacious sense of fun, even if the originality quotient is a little lower this time around.

After some back-and-forth about command, James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) takes the helm of the starship Enterprise with his trusted but emotionless first officer Spock (Zachary Quinto), who’s in a bit of a lover’s quarrel with communications lieutenant Uhura (Zoe Saldana).  The Enterprise crew is called into active duty after Starfleet Commander John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) declares a one-man war against the Federation.  Pursuing Harrison into Klingon space, Kirk and the crew confront dark secrets, the threat of their own mortality, and a full consideration of what it means to be a family.

Gut reaction?  This movie is an absolute blast.  It’s as exuberantly entertaining as a summer movie ought to be, delivering laughs and action in rapid succession without much filler.  From the opening scene, which seems to channel the temple run from Raiders of the Lost Ark, through deep-space combat and shifting gravity sprints, Star Trek Into Darkness is more a mad dash than a mere trek.

It’s engaging beyond expectation, in large part because of how stunning the visuals are.  Yes, those trademark Abrams lens flares are still omnipresent (and there’s at least one scene where they actually obstruct what we’re supposed to look at), but the stark illuminated interiors of the Enterprise have never looked better.  I’m not usually that guy, but:  the 3D IMAX on Star Trek Into Darkness is one of the best visual experiences in recent history, so I’d strongly recommend the upgrade.  This movie just looks good.

The other really great thing about Star Trek Into Darkness is the cast, ensemble at its best but with compelling centers.  Pine and Quinto redouble their efforts from the first film, especially Quinto, who does a deft job balancing cool Vulcan logic with half-human gestures toward emotion.  New faces Peter Weller and Alice Eve fit in well, though one suspects Eve was cast more for her lingerie physique than anything else (which is a shame, since her Carol Marcus is a fine foil for the womanizing Kirk).  And it’s a real treat to see Simon Pegg own the role of Scotty, very nearly stealing the show were it not for Benedict Cumberbatch, the face that launched a thousand Tumblrs.  As Harrison, Cumberbatch joins a long line of talented actors who play villains who soliloquize while in captivity amid hidden plans (see also Heath Ledger, Tom Hiddleston, Javier Bardem); as a complex villain with a semi-sympathetic backstory, Cumberbatch knows when to play the pathos card and when to nosh the scenery like it’s going out of style.

Without spoiling too much, though – and perhaps true believers want to skip this paragraph just in case – where the first film quite deliberately distanced itself from the original franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness wears its affiliation on its sleeve so transparently that even someone who’s never seen the earlier films (namely, me) can see the references a mile away.  For my money, the end result is an entertaining success – and a movie only has to be entertaining to get a good review from me – but the retreads only call attention to themselves, thereby pulling the audience out of the film, however briefly.  A cameo by Leonard Nimoy, though invited by the first film, is the first misstep in a train of callbacks that, again, are too unsubtle not to be cited here.  Longtime fans may relish these references; others may find them tedious and repetitive.  Again, it ends up working, but I can’t help but wonder what the writers might have devised had they fully unfettered themselves from their forebearers.

All told, Star Trek Into Darkness is a smash success of a summer movie, well worth those two hours and fistfuls of popcorn you won’t begrudge.  And in 3D IMAX, all the merrier.  Even if we have to wait through a five-year mission where no man et cetera et cetera, Star Trek 3 ought to be a real hoot.

Star Trek Into Darkness is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence.”  Spaceships and lasers and fistfights, oh my.

Unstoppable (2010)

It's no secret that a) I love Denzel Washington, and b) I always feel a little bit guilty about not having time between September and May to update this site regularly. So when I got a chance to catch a preview screening of Tony Scott's new Denzel vehicle (pun intended) Unstoppable, I jumped at the chance.

That's right, kids; we're reviewing this one a day before it hits wide release. You're welcome.

In Unstoppable, Denzel's fifth collaboration with director Tony Scott, Washington plays engineer Frank Barnes, a company man who's feeling the economy's generational burden - a fact further emphasized when he's paired with young conductor Will Colson, who's fighting family issues and the perception that he got the job more on the strength of his family name than his qualifications. When dispatcher Connie Hooper (Rosario Dawson, in a part that could have been played by anyone) reports that there's a fast-paced runaway train carying hazardous materials on their track, Frank and Will have to decide whether to follow orders and detour their train or take on the 70 mph beast behind them.

The trailer for this one had a few people groaning; the dialogue ("a missle the size of the Chrysler building") and the compounded escalation of the peril (toxic chemicals, a train full of children, a horse) led a few skeptics to raise a wary eyebrow. And I'll concede that there were moments in the lead-up to the film's debut where I wasn't sure whether this would be a formulaic race-against-the-clock. But it was silly of me to doubt Denzel Washington and Tony Scott. Denzel brings his characteristic charisma to the screen, and Scott deploys his moving-train cinematography to great effect here.

All this is not to say that Unstoppable is one of the greatest films of 2010 (I'm sure that, come the end of the year, Inception and Toy Story 3 are going to top my list). But it works. And it's a whole heck of a lot of fun. I've said many times before that Denzel, like Johnny Depp, is one of the best living actors; unlike Depp, though, who's often as bizarre as he is compelling, Denzel is always a great deal of fun to watch, exuding vibrant charm and exuberant personality in everything he does - without sacrificing an iota of craftsmanship (see Malcolm X if all you know about Denzel is the Jay Pharoah impression from SNL a few weeks back). It probably says something about the contagious nature of his personality that I'm referring to him by his first name. In fact, I'd hazard a guess that only Denzel could take the word "Me" and turn it into a line that gets the biggest laugh in a packed cinema. So when the screen isn't filled with a train careening on the tracks, Denzel's either getting the audience to crack a smile or tugging at their heartstrings with his earnest recounting of his backstory.

But the moments when the focus of the film isn't on the action are few and far between. It's interesting that Tony Scott, whose recent movies (Domino, Deja Vu) always looked like they were filmed from a moving train, has shifted to making movies about trains (here and in The Taking of Pelham 123). Now, in movies like this, there are only two ways this can end - either they stop the train, or they don't. I won't spoil which ending Scott chooses for Unstoppable, but I will say that the film lures the audience into a sensibility that all this will turn out all right; the catastrophe is precipitated when a portly railyard employee (Kevin Smith standby [and stand-in, as in the underrated Art School Confidential] Ethan Suplee) goofs, a scene played for laughs until we realize that the air brakes aren't connected and the train can't be stopped remotely.

From there, Scott introduces a number of complicating factors that make the threat more credible - and more palpable - than I was ready to give the film credit, based on the trailers. Sure, we know that the schoolkids on a field trip aren't going to collide head-on with the renegade train, but we're not so sure about the automotive stalled on the tracks. In some ways, the latter is far more effective, upping the stakes by suggesting what the train could do (a variation on Hitchcock's bang-v.-anticipation theory). My apologies to the people seated next to me on either side in the theater, because I'm sure I was hooting and hollering throughout the movie; even though I kept telling myself that the movie had to turn out all right - the cavalier comedy of the first reel suggested as much - I found myself holding my breath, gritting my teeth, and then inhaling sharply at each turn.

When the film ends - after two heartstopping climaxes - Scott wisely lets the audience breathe and, rather than end with a last-second one-last-scare moment, decompresses by revisiting the lighter moments of the film: scene-stealing engineer Ned (Lew Temple) takes center stage at a press conference, Denzel gets one last wisecrack (which honestly tipped the scales in favor of my enjoyment of the movie), and we're treated to another shot of Ethan Suplee falling on his ass. At the end of the day, then, Unstoppable isn't just an action movie; it's an action movie that's willing to have fun, both with itself and with its audience.

If you're on the fence about this one, I'd encourage you to climb aboard; you might be pleasantly surprised. Denzel alone is worth the price of admission.

Unstoppable is rated PG-13 "for sequences of action and peril, and some language." Obviously, the train barrelling down the tracks might unsettle some, as will the repeated complicating factors thrown in the path (often literally) of the train. A few F-bombs get tossed around casually, but they're negligible in the big scheme.