Super 8

Do you remember the original television advertisements for The Matrix?

Now, if you've seen the movie, that trailer more or less makes sense.  In 1999, though, that was just a string of random images and a sorry-ass excuse for not telling anyone what the story for the damn movie was.  I ended up seeing The Matrix on its first night in theaters, but only because my friend and I couldn't think of anything else to do with our time; I recall arguing that we had to have something better to do, when watching movies is all we did.  That's right, I argued against watching a movie to a friend who loves movies more than I do.  That's how much the trailer pissed me off.  Of course, the first Matrix was all kinds of awesome, so the story had a happy ending and I felt dumb for objecting, but I find myself reacting similarly when movie trailers purposefully frustrate potential viewers.


...and this was my first glimpse at what would become Super 8, the latest film from the producer of The Blair Witch Monster Cloverfield.  I was predictably unimpressed.  In the intervening year or so between seeing that trailer and watching the film, the only additional knowledge I had was that the movie featured child actors.  Awesome; kids and a trainsplosion.  But summer is upon us, and my lovely wife loves her summer blockbusters (and J.J. Abrams), so I ended up watching this movie, too, on its opening weekend.  I'm so weak.

Here's the good news: the story requires a certain amount of suspense, so I won't be giving away too much of the plot.  Well, it's good news for me, because it involves less typing.  Super 8 begins by focusing on Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), a middle school-aged kid whose mother tragically died recently, and whose father, Jackson Lamb (Kyle Chandler), buried himself in his deputy sheriff work instead of consoling his only child.  Like most kids, Joe is surprisingly resilient and he intends to spend his summer vacation helping his loud-mouthed best friend, Charles (Riley Griffiths), film a short movie to be entered into a statewide competition for teenage filmmakers.  Charles is the director, Joe handles the makeup, Cary (Ryan Lee) is every single zombie in their movie (as well as their expert in firecrackers), and the other two friends are there to round out the cast.  After reading up on screenwriting, Charles decides that he needs a romantic interest in his zombie film, so he somehow convinces the very pretty Alice (Elle Fanning) to join the team.  The other thing that Charles realized was important to filmmaking was production value, so he decided to fake his; to get realistic background action, he gets the whole crew to sneak out at night and act at the local train station, so they can capture the train passing by in their shots.

Great idea, fatty.

As the trailer suggests, though, their evening at the train station was fairly eventful.  While the kids did their best to not die in train wreckage, their super 8 camera keeps filming, capturing something on film that they were never meant to see.

Super man, girl, monkey, dog, cat, horse, and that looks like mom and dad on the right: Super Eight.

That's all I care to say about the story of Super 8, but I would like to point out how silly the title is.  Yes, I understand that the kids were making a crappy short film on super 8 film, but does anyone really think that film is the focus of this story?  Of course not.  It's kind of like when a band writes a song with an obviously memorable chorus, like "I bathe in vanilla pudding," and end up naming the song something pretentious or obtuse, like "Onyx."  This is, in many ways, a monster movie.  It's deeper than that, I'll admit, but this title sucks.  Thank goodness producer Steven Spielberg didn't follow this model when naming his movies; I don't know how excited I would have been to see Raiders of the Lost Ark if it was called "Whip."

Whatever the title, I was pleasantly surprised with the acting in this movie.  Having child actors as the primary characters is always a risky choice, but these kids were pretty good.  Joel Courtney was very appealing in the lead role, projecting a natural awkward charisma that reminded me of Patrick Fugit.  Elle Fanning was flat-out awesome as his leading lady; I usually will give a grudging acknowledgement of good performances from child actors --- let's be honest, most of the time they get attention for just acting a little older than they are --- but she was very impressive.  This wasn't a powerhouse performance, but she showed a lot of natural talent and good instincts in the dramatic moments.  Keep in mind that this is basically a creature feature, so the fact that any actor had effective dramatic moments at all is impressive, much less one young actress having several.  And she's only thirteen!

The other kids were okay, but those two clearly carried the film.  Riley Griffiths was pretty good as the kind of obnoxious friend and Ryan Lee was occasionally funny as the group's resident pyromaniac, but that's about it.  Kyle Chandler was pretty decent as Joe's father, but I found his more heroic moments a little far-fetched.  Ron Eldard played Alice's drunken father and was serviceable, I guess.  Noah Emmerich was similarly okay, once again playing an untrustworthy character; maybe it's the pock marks, but I can never trust that guy to not be evil in movies.  Or in real life, probably.  Former 7th Heaven kid David Gallagher had a bit part as a creepy stoner, and that was good for a few chuckles.  Another child star, AJ of the jail-bait pop group Aly & AJ, played the fat kid's sexy sister.  Aside from the two child leading roles, the acting was fine, but not spectacular.

J.J. Abrams is better known as a producer and creative force than he actually is as a director.  Despite having twenty years of producer credits, this is only his third feature film directorial effort, after Mission: Impossible III and the Star Trek reboot.  Personally, I don't usually have strong feelings about Abrams as a director, but I thought he did a pretty good job with Super 8.  Working with kids is always difficult, but he got some very solid performances out of this group and he balanced drama, humor, and the occasional fright pretty well.  I'm sure more than a few people will notice a clear stylistic homage to co-producer Steven Spielberg in the way the film is shot and how the mysterious creature is revealed; it is quite possible that you might have flashbacks to E.T. or Close Encounters while watching this movie.  That's an okay choice, I suppose --- if you're going to make a movie that relies on the wonder of children, borrow from the best --- but I wish Abrams had put more of his own spin on things.  Instead, he did a very good job as a Spielbergian imitator.  Abrams' inexperience as a director shows up from time to time, as many of his dramatic shots are nearly identical.

I hope you like people looking anxiously at something off-camera, because it happens a lot.

No, seriously, a lot.  As in over...

...and over...

...and over...

...and over again.  Will this bother most people?  Probably not, at least in their initial viewing.  Besides, that's more of a stylistic shortcoming than an inability to direct.

I don't want to give the impression that I did not enjoy Super 8.  I did.  It was the most adorable alien/creature/monster movie I have ever seen.  It has been a long time since anyone made a movie in the vein of The Goonies --- an occasionally scary adventure for kids that adults can enjoy --- so it was nice to see that style revisited.  The action was well-directed, the special effects looked good, none of the child actors were terrible and most were actually effective, and the pace was reasonable.  The film's greatest asset is in how well the attitude and wonder of teenagers was captured.  It's hard to accurately depict teenagers in a positive light --- they are, after all, inhuman trolls, one and all --- but Abrams was able to make these kids likeable and believable.  As far as PG-13 movies aimed at kids go, this one was a lot of fun.

Aww...the one with the hat thinks he's a person!

My biggest gripe with Super 8 is with the writing.  It's not bad, but I wish it was a little less simple.  The bad guys are really obviously bad.  The good guys pull off some truly unlikely heroics.  And that whole trainsplosion...?  Really?  There has to be a better way to stop a train.  None of that makes a huge impact on the story at large, but for a movie that tries so hard to be rooted in the reality of 1979, moments like that (and the Walkman joke) receive a raised eyebrow from me.  I still like the movie, but I don't know if the writing will keep it from being the classic that it is obviously striving to be.

Another limitation of this movie is the setting.  For a movie presumably aimed at kids and filled with childlike wonder, it sure is pressing all the nostalgia buttons for people born in the seventies and early eighties.  Is a thirteen year-old in 2011 going to return to this movie, set almost twenty years before he/she was born, often enough to make this a classic?  I don't think so.  I think this film is a love letter to Spielberg in his prime, and that's okay.  It might not be as epic or as memorable as it wants to be, but Super 8 does a great job as an homage.

Star Trek (2009)

As the eleventh Star Trek movie, the plainly titled Star Trek (2009) had a lot to live up to.  The Star Trek universe is a rich tapestry of science fiction, with more races, worlds and continuity from the television shows and previous films than any other major Hollywood franchise.  Even the James Bond series, which has many more movies, is not even close to the depth of Star Trek.  It's too bad so many Star Trek movies suck.  To reboot the franchise, television producer/creator J.J. Abrams was recruited to direct.  Abrams isn't a trekkie, so he was up for anything, as long as it looked cool and had Kirk and Spock in it.  If I was a trekkie, I would have gotten a little nervous after hearing that.

If you're not familiar with the Star Trek series, don't worry.  There's plenty to learn, but very few important people actually care if you know it.  So, here are the basics.  In the future, humans have gone into space and met other intelligent species.  These friendly planets have formed a union, called the Federation.  The Federation's version of the Army is the Starfleet Academy; Starfleet protects Federation planets and explores the universe peacefully, seeking knowledge.  Aside from Humans, the most important Federation species are the Vulcans, a race of pointy-eared (but otherwise human-looking), emotionless, logical killjoys.  The opposite of the Vulcans are the Romulans (not part of the Federation), who look pretty much like Vulcans, but are mean, devious, and emotional.  Technically, you don't even need to know that much, but it helps a little when some good guys and bad guys both have pointy ears.

Fans in Romulan costumes: Can you smell the sex in the air?

The movie begins not with a familiar cast of characters, but a blast from the past.  While investigating some sort of electrical space storm, a Federation ship, the Kelvin (what, was Celcius taken?), is attacked by a Romulan ship, the Narada.  After his first mate (Clifton Collins Jr.) convinces the Starfleet commander (Faran Tahir) to visit the Romulan ship, the Romulan captain, Nero (Eric Bana) kills the Starfleet man.  Or, in other words, mean alien kills gullible human.  Back on the Kelvin, George Kirk (Chris Hemsworth) realizes how serious the situation is, and orders an evacuation of the ship, which includes his pregnant wife (Jennifer Morrison).  George knows that the Narada will pick off the evacuation shuttles without something to distract it, so he opts for a suicide mission and steers his ship into the Narada.  The rest of the crew survives, including little James Tiberius Kirk, who was born amidst all the trouble.  The Narada was never seen again.

Fast forward a couple decades, and James Kirk (Chris Pine) is now a headstrong cadet of the Starfleet Academy.  When he's not busy getting it on with green-skinned women, Kirk seems to fill his time by flirting/frustrating language specialist Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and doing his absolute best to royally irritate Starfleet's resident Vulcan, Spock (Zachary Quinto).  When a mysterious electrical space storm appears nearby the planet Vulcan, several Starfleet ships investigate; recognizing the electrical storm as being eerily similar to the one from his birthday, cadet Kirk convinces his ship's captain, Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood), to hold back a bit.  Smart boy.  The Narada appears and destroys all the ships it encounters, and appears intent on turning the planet Vulcan into a black hole.  What is the deal with the mysterious Narada?  Why is it attacking the Federation in such a strange manner?  How long until it changes its focus to a planet that actually matters, like Earth?  Did I say "turn the planet...into a black hole?"  How do you do that?  The answer to all those questions is "You'll see."

I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy Star Trek.  I've seen a couple of movies, mostly when I was younger, but the series has never captured my attention for long, aside from the excellent Wrath of Khan.  I'm not a big fan of J.J. Abrams' previous film work and was never a Lost fan, so the idea of rebooting the series with young, sexy actors seemed kind of like a creative last gasp to me.  In my defense, I'm not wrong.  The path the filmmakers took to do this, though, was interesting, entertaining, and surprisingly fun.

This Star Trek, unlike its predecessors, assumes you know only the basics about Star Trek, like the fact that it takes place in space.  Actually, this is a science fiction movie that assumes that you hate science fiction, and goes around that problem.  Gone are any highbrow parallels to modern society's excesses, or commentary on political ideas (for better or worse).  This isn't a movie where the plot is all that important; this is an action movie set in space, with all the explosions and punching that implies.  There's a few things for the core sci-fi fanatics out there, but this movie was made to entertain, pure and simple.

The key to this was the cast.  Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto were awesome as Kirk and Spock, respectively.  Since this movie is more or less centered around the two of them learning to work together, that is very important.  Pine comes across as brash, headstrong, and intelligent, someone just as likely to beat you in school as he is to get in a fight with you at a bar.  Quinto was surprisingly effective as the typically emotionless Spock, and his performance stands up against that of the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy (who has a small part in the film).  It's hard to play what is, essentially, a straight man to the rollicking man slut that is James Kirk and make it seem cool, but Quinto did it.  The rest of the supporting cast, while noteworthy, were basically bit parts.  Zoe Saldana probably had the meatiest supporting role, but her performance seemed a little forced; I just felt like her character wanted to end each line with "Man, I am a cool lady!" in an attempt to draw in more female viewers.  I have nothing against changing up the sausage fest that is your typical Star Trek movie, but I don't know if I Saldana has the acting chops to back that up.  Karl Urban assumed the mantle of Leonard "Bones" McCoy, doctor and second-guesser of Kirk and Spock; he was fine, but I thought he was imitating his predecessor too much.  Other recognizable actors filling established Star Trek roles include Simon Pegg (as Scottie), John Cho (Sulu), and Anton Yelchin (Chekov).  Pegg and Yelchin were kind of funny and cute, and Cho was inexplicably in a fight sequence where he didn't really do anything cool.  As for the bad guys, I can honestly say that I didn't recognize either Eric Bana or Clifton Collins Jr. in their makeup.  They weren't particularly stunning, but they were suitably evil.  There are more bit parts with name actors, like Chris Hemsworth, Jennifer Morrison, Winona Ryder, Rachel Nichols, Deep Roy, Victor Garber, and Tyler Perry, but the important thing amidst all these famous faces is that Kirk and Spock, played by two relatively unknown actors, were pretty great.

"If they're so awesome, how come they didn't inspire this fan art?" - William Shatner

That was the top-ranked Google image for the search terms "kirk and spock."  Fact.

J.J. Abrams direction was decent with the actors, but I was really impressed with how involved I was in the movie; when I saw Mission: Impossible III (also directed by Abrams), I was impressed with how frequently Tom Cruise has to sprint in his movies.  That's a nice step up for Abrams.  He's not a great storyteller, but he's smart enough to know that, if you speed by them, it is easy to ignore plot flaws.

When I was first watching this movie, a little question kept popping up in the back of my head: "How is this going to tie in with the rest of the movies?"  Yes, this movie is supposed to be a reboot, but it has all the same characters as the original series and they all act basically the same.  By making this into a "Star Trek: Year One," wasn't this movie effectively rebooting itself as the beginning of a prequel franchise?  As it turns out, none of that really mattered.  When it became apparent that time travel and alternate realities played a part in this movie, all my questions were answered with Leonard Nimoy smiling and saying, "Don't think about it.  You'll just end up with a nosebleed."  I usually don't have a problem with pseudo-science in sci-fi movies, but when it is actually the crux of the entire plot, I want it to make a little more sense.

That said, I still enjoyed this movie.  It was fun.  It broke the rule of every odd-numbered Star Trek being terrible.  And, most importantly, it brought back big-budget bombast to science fiction movies.  I think the last truly great sci-fi-action hybrid was the original Matrix, and this was a refreshing change from all the high-profile sci-fi flops in recent years.  And you know what?  I think the sequel to this movie should be pretty awesome, too.  I give this Star Trek reboot high praise, or as trekkies might say: to infinity and beyond!