Dredd

As we all are quite aware, these are the days of high-profile franchise reboots/re-imaginings/just-plain-remakes.  Not that Hollywood has ever been a bastion of creativity, mind you, but there do seem to be a lot of these things floating around nowadays.  Like many people, I tend to treat these reboots with cynicism.  When I heard about Dredd (the remake of Judge Dredd), though, I was all for it.  Why?  Because the Stallone/Schneider movie is terrible.  If you're going to remake a movie, it's easier to improve a crappy one than a classic.

Man, the future sucks.  Most of the world is an irradiated wasteland.  Everyone left in America lives in Mega-City One, a sprawling concrete jungle that runs from Boston to Washington, DC.  Older buildings are left to decay, while super-skyscraper tenements house much of the population.  There are 17,000 crimes reported in the city each day, and there is only enough manpower in the police force to respond to 6% of those calls.  The police of Mega-City One are called Judges, and are allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner for any crime they come upon.  Dredd is the story of just another day for one such Judge, Judge Dredd (Karl Urban).

In the future, the police will smell all your farts and hold you accountable

Judge Dredd is given a probationary officer named Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) to assess.  Normally, Anderson would not be up for evaluation, as she failed her basic Judge testing --- but she happens to be the most powerful psychic on record, and the Department of Justice wants to make use of that talent.  The first crime Dredd and Anderson respond to is a triple homicide at the Peach Tree super-tenement.  What starts out as a simple murder bust quickly gets out of hand when the local drug lord, Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) decides to make the entire 200-story building a war zone, with hundreds of people gunning for the Judges.

Trust me, these civilians are not as nice as they look

The acting in Dredd was a bit of a surprise to me, and I mean that in a good way.  Karl Urban did a good job deadpanning his way through this role; this is a part that was never meant for character development, and Urban kept steady throughout the film.  I was surprised that he never removed his helmet during the film, but swallowing his vanity helped keep Dredd the unemotional Dirty Harry clone that he should be.  I was even more impressed by  Olivia Thirlby.  She had the unpleasant job of being the rookie character that is going to be squeamish and stupid and wrong all the time, and yet she was surprisingly effective at providing an emotional core to this film.  I don't know if Dredd needed an emotional core, but it has one, and it was handled well.  Lena Headey was also very good as the wicked Ma-Ma.  Headey is becoming one of the better evil bitches in Hollywood, and she convincingly held her own in this ultra-macho action movie.

A beautiful woman that isn't treated as a sex object in an action movie: how novel!

Wood Harris was solid as a mean thug, and Domhnall Gleeson was pretty good as a weenie computer tech guy, but even they were essentially props for the three main characters to work around.  Still, I can honestly say that I enjoyed three actors in the remake of Judge Dredd.  How bizarre is that?

Dredd was directed by Pete Travis, and it is the first film of his I've seen.  He made some solid choices with Dredd.  While it is tempting to show off all sorts of technology and cool stuff when making a dystopian future film, Travis wisely chose to narrow this film's focus and keep the ball rolling.  The majority of the story happens inside the Peach Tree skyscraper, and the idea of the Judges being hunted by the inhabitants of Peach Tree is in place by the 30-minute mark.  The rest of the movie is a firefight, and the earlier half-hour was also action-packed. 

The storyboards for this scene just read "traffic"

Travis showcases the action well, but he also does a good job at pacing the film, throwing the Judges into one shitstorm after another.  That would have been more than enough to make this better than Judge Dredd, but Travis also added some humanity (via Anderson's character) and did some very cool work with the slow-motion sequences, too.  I loved that the slow-motion was utilized as part of the story, and the refracted light in those scenes was a nice touch. 

Slow-motion as part of the story?  Someone needs to tell Zack Snyder!

Of course, having Dredd shoot people while they are high on a drug that makes them see slow-motion rainbows also helps make this movie what it is.  To sum it up, I plan on seeing the next Pete Travis action movie in theaters.

In a movie about police officers who are allowed and encouraged to kill criminals, the main attraction for Dredd is always going to be the action.  And Dredd delivers.  This is a rare beast in the modern cinema jungle: an honest-to-goodness body count movie.  There are so many kills that I stopped counting within the first fifteen minutes.  With so many death scenes, they are not all going to be examples of gory excess, but there are some spectacular examples of bad-ass glorification of violence.  How about a slow-motion bullet to the face?

...or, possibly, a retro advertisement for Gushers?

If that doesn't do it for you, perhaps you would like a bullet that lights a fire inside a criminal's skull?

When I am police chief, we will call this ammo "default"

Dredd is easily the most violent movie of 2012 that I have seen, and it is also among the best action movies of the year.

Dredd probably isn't going to win over any new fans, though.  The ultra-violence can be a turn-off, and there is oodles of it.  There were some unexpected gems in this film, things that curious viewers will appreciate if they choose to watch.  For starters, the science-fiction in this movie is handled with a soft touch.  Sure, the Judges have guns that respond to voice commands, but most of the futuristic technology is subtle and left unexplained.  This film hints at a world with interesting bio-implants and bizarre tattoos, but the filmmakers were content to leave those stories unexplained, as background dressing.  Even more impressive was the portrayal of women.  Most of the time, women in action movies are there to look pretty and (fingers crossed) find their way into various stages of undress.  Not in Dredd.  Both female leads are tough, strong, and essentially asexual; that works even better with Judge Dredd, because he is equally asexual. 

"I get hard for the law"

They are just three tough people, trying to shoot the hell out of some folks.  Dredd also brings with it one of my favorite martial arts movie tropes: the building full of bad guys.  This is underutilized in English-speaking films.  Why go to exotic locations, when you can keep everything compact and tense, with literally hundreds of potential enemies?  I love action movies that don't bother with elaborate excuses and just go for the action.

I can't say that Dredd is exactly what it needs to be, though, even though I like a lot of things about it.  There are some minor visual complaints, like the fact that it was very difficult to differentiate between Judges during a fight scene.

At least two of these are not Karl Urban, that's all I can say for sure

The bigger problem for me was the lack of humor in the script.  I don't mean to imply that I missed Rob Schneider by any means, but this material deserves more dark humor.  Urban did a great job delivering his lines with a spot-on deadpan.  All he needed was a script that made some of the lines just a little bit funnier.

Genuine appreciation, or does the frown show ironic approval of a bad parent?  You decide.

That's not much of a complaint, when you think about the source material.  Dredd could have been utter trash.  Easily.  Instead, it is an unrelenting action movie with enough violence for three shoot-em-ups.  There's a fine line between nonstop action and brainless blood orgy, but Dredd toes the line with style and winds up one of the year's biggest surprises.

And Soon the Darkness (2010)

I didn't mean to watch this movie, I swear I didn't.  I saw it on Netflix and confused it with A Perfect Getaway; I'm starting to really enjoy Timothy Oliphant, thanks to Justified, and I was curious to see a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth.  Well, And Soon the Darkness is not that movie.  At all.  I wish it was --- and A Perfect Getaway probably isn't that good, either.  But, since I started it, I figured I might as well finish it and never be tempted to watch it again.

And Soon the Darkness is a remake of a 1970 horror movie of the same name, and it probably follows the same basic plot.  I don't feel like checking, so we'll just assume that's true.  The film opens with a woman being held against her will in a basement or torture room or someplace scary and dank.  We hear her crying and screaming for a bit, and then we see someone (presumably her captor) motivate her silence my whipping her with some stripped (but charged) electrical wires.  If you want more of that story, you should really just switch to Hostel or Hostel II, because this film doesn't really go back to this point.  Instead, it skips ahead three months to find two stupid American ladies vacationing in Argentina; Stephanie (Amber Heard) and Ellie (Odette Yustman) are part of a larger tour group, but they decided to spend their last night in Argentina on their own.  Being attractive and young only amplifies the pair's stupid American-ness; neither of them speaks much Spanish, or knows anything about the area, or can pick up on subtle warnings.

I'm glad their helmets are protecting their handlebars.

And when I say "subtle," I mean multiple people telling them to stay together and not leave their friend alone.  They stick together at first; they go to a bar, where Ellie hits on anything that moves and eventually drunkenly stumbles  off with a sexy Latin man.  She doesn't get kidnapped here.  I point that out because the movie clearly sets up the expectation of her kidnapping with several instances of Stephanie having difficulty finding Ellie; Ellie is sometimes found in another room or, in one case, one camera pan away.  Well, when Ellie stumbles back to their room in the early AM, she accidentally unplugs Stephanie's alarm clock, so the pair sleep in late and miss the daily bus out of San Frankidnaptown.  Both women have cell phones, so I don't know why they were relying on a hotel clock, but whatever, that is certainly not the biggest flaw in this movie.  When they miss the bus, the girls decide to try again tomorrow.  What should they do until then?

If you answered "Roll over and kiss," you will be extra disappointed.

That's right, they find a nice, secluded area and tan for a few hours.  Eventually, Stephanie decides that they had better get going because...um...they have to meet a bus in another twenty hours?  I'm not quite sure.  Anyway, she wants to leave and Ellie wants to stay, they start bitching at each other and they split up, with Ellie opting to sunbathe alone in a forest clearing.  Shockingly, Ellie disappears.  When Stephanie realizes this, she starts looking and does everything in her power to find her friend.  No luck.  What can she do to find her friend so far away from home?  And is Ellie really in trouble?  The answers are "not a whole lot" and "yes," respectively.  The real question is how long before Stephanie disappears?

I don't have terribly high standards for movies that fall in the horror genre, but even I have my limits.  Before I say anything mean about the acting, though, I should point out that this is a poorly written script.  That said, I think I can honestly say with some assurance that Odette Yustman is not a good actress.  Yes, she's attractive, but that doesn't give her the right to annoy me with her voice or soulless eyes.  Here, she gets to act bitchy and vapid.  And later, scared.  It's quite a bit of range for her.  Amber Heard is not much better.  Her well-behaved idiot is boring and charisma-free, so you never actually care if she is going to find her friend or if she will remain unharmed.  She's not annoying, but she never gives you a reason to like her, either.  Karl Urban plays the mysterious and creepy other American that just happens to be in St. Kidnappey.

Yeah, he looks trustworthy.

His character is annoyingly and foolishly close-vested about his motives, but Urban's performance was a revelation for me.  Namely, he isn't a very good actor, and it becomes more apparent when he's not playing a medieval-style warrior.  Cesar Vianco was mediocre at best as the villain, and that's all the effort I want to spend thinking about him.

As for the work of first-time feature film director and co-writer of And Soon the Darkness, Marcos Efron, I just have to say this: boo.  I went into this movie thinking it was another film entirely and I was still very aware that this was going to be a movie about kidnapping.  That is terrible direction.  There was no suspense.  There was no logic to the camera work.  All the actors sucked, so he certainly didn't direct them.  This isn't even an original screenplay, since it's a remake --- and the story is still awful!  Here's a hint for future writer/directors: if your South American characters are speaking Spanish (without subtitles) throughout the movie, they shouldn't be speaking in English when they discuss the most illegal parts of the plot.  That's stupid.  Not as stupid as the fates of the characters, but it's still dumb.

Like, "Run, Forrest, run!" dumb.

Since this is a pretty horror-free horror movie and there is no nudity in the film, there really isn't any reason for this movie to exist.  Sure, Odette Yustman sings along to the Divinyls' "I Touch Myself," but that's a pretty piss-poor highlight for any movie.  The characters act without any semblance of personality or logic, the script is dull, and the plot is obvious.  The only aspect of this movie that keeps it from being utter trash is the very legitimate fear of kidnapping while traveling abroad.  There is a good movie to be made with this idea.  This isn't it, but the basis for this plot could inspire something that isn't soul-crushingly bad.  As for this movie, I wish I could bass slap (that's swinging a bass --- the fish --- like a bat into somebody's face) everyone involved.

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!

Red (2010)

Apparently, America, we are having trouble saying goodbye to our aging action stars.  If you truly doubt that, please explain the appeal of Rambo or The Expendables.  Don't get me wrong, I miss the days when a hero could stand in one spot and shoot down fifteen thousand ninja-Communist-Nazis, without getting even a flesh wound, and I've enjoyed Stallone's increasingly idiotic movies.  Still, it's kind of strange that we haven't seen anybody (except maybe Jason Statham) truly embrace the stupid action hero role, given how important dumb action movies were in the 80s and 90s.  When you think about it, the success of The Expendables is an amusing insight into just how badly we want these actors to keep killing bad guys.  I don't know how intentional this was, but Red seems to be in on that joke, too.

It's kind of like the song from White Christmas...what do you do with a former CIA black-ops agent when he stops being a CIA black-ops agent?  Well, if you are Frank Moses (Bruce Willis), and you are living an inoffensive existence as a lonely retiree whose only friend is a customer service representative at a bank several states away, the answer is simple: kill him.  For reasons unknown to him, Frank discovers that his status in the intelligence community has been changed from "retired" to RED ("retired, extremely dangerous").  Being RED means that assassination squads infiltrate your home in the middle of the night, looking to terminate with extreme prejudice.  However, the "extremely dangerous" bit is an understatement; Frank quickly kills his attackers and begins a quest to find out who wants to kill him and why.

Along the way, Frank has to pick up that bank representative, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker).  He realizes that his phone must have been tapped prior to the assassination attempt and that the next logical step for the bad guys would be to kidnap Sarah and use her as leverage against him.  She's not very willing at first, but as more people keep showing up to kill her, Sarah quickly gets on the Frank Moses bandwagon.  Frank can't unravel the plot against him all by his lonesome, though, which means he needs to find help.  Since he's retired, it turns out that his help is also a little past their prime.  Joe (Morgan Freeman), Frank's mentor, is now living in a retirement home and passes the time by ogling his nurse's ass.  Marvin (John Malkovich) is a well-armed conspiracy theorist that is paranoid to the extent of having a decoy house.  Victoria (Helen Mirren) is a prim and proper housewife, formerly the best wetworks specialist in the business.  With a little help from Ivan (Brian Cox), a Russian spy and former adversary, the group sets out to learn the truth.

I so so so wish he yelled "Flava Flaaaaav!" here.

 I was excited to see this movie after seeing the trailers for it.  It didn't look like a great action movie --- it has Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, remember? --- but I thought it looked funny.  I was wrong.  It is funny and a good action movie.  This is one of Willis' more wooden roles, but I don't know if I would have bought a black-ops specialist with a talent for wisecracks.  His stoicism was probably for the best.  Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren clearly had a lot of fun in their roles, with Mirren taking particular relish in being the gun expert.  I go back and forth with my appreciation for John Malkovich, but he plays a pretty amusing paranoid here.  Malkovich was probably my favorite character in the film, but I also really enjoyed Brian Cox.  I think I just like the idea of former arch-enemies getting together and reminiscing about "the good old days," when they used to try to kill each other.  Cox doesn't get nearly enough comic work, in my opinion.  Mary-Louise Parker was also good as the relative newbie to all the danger.  Is it just me, or was Parker neither attractive or talented until she turned 40?  Weird.  I liked seeing Ernest Borgnine again, even if he wasn't threatening to shoot anyone in the face.  The rest of the cast was kind of meh.  James Remar was in the movie for all of two seconds.  Rebecca "Mrs. David Mamet" Pidgeon and her ugly jaw was as awful as she usually is, as was Richard Dreyfuss in his small-but-overacted role.  I'm not exactly sure why Julian McMahon took his small part in the film, but he was definitely many years too young for the character he played.  The bulk of the meh comes from Karl Urban, though.  While I appreciate his dedication to the action movie genre, Urban is best when he speaks little and doesn't develop as a character.  Here, he tries to actually act, with little to show for it.

Though this isn't from Red, Ernest Borgnine is still awesome.

This movie shouldn't be as good as it is.  The screenwriters that adapted this story from the comic book series are the same people who wrote the dreadful Whiteout.  The director, Robert Schwentke, has never shown a talent for either action or comedy, with his only other English films being The Time Traveler's Wife and Flightplan.  Somehow, those films managed to collectively gross over $300 million and still have absolutely zero appeal to me.  Regardless, the script was smart, the actors were directed well, and the action was pretty cool.  I don't think I've ever seen so many bullets fired into one suburban home before, but I liked it.

Probably the thing I appreciated most about this movie was that it didn't keep calling attention to the age of its characters.  Aside from an assassin calling Malkovich "old man," and maybe a similar remark made during a Willis-Urban fight, age was not a joke in this movie.  Thank you, screenwriters.  Instead, the humor was largely contextual and delivery-based.  The main actors were all very good, and only the bad guys weren't funny.  The pace is quick, the action is good, and many things go boom.  This is exactly what From Paris With Love should have been, but was not.  I will go so far as to say that Red is one of the most enjoyable action movies of 2010, and the perfect antidote for anyone who cannot fathom the success of The Expendables.