Back Seat Producers

The Pope has died, and as the Vatican prepares to name his successor from four possible candidates, they find themselves under attack and their candidates kidnapped by what appears to be a resurrection of The Illuminati. Now, Professor Robert Langdon finds himself recruited by The Vatican, even after his last escapade with them, in order to save the kidnapped and ultimately Vatican City.

That’s a real simplified premise for Angels & Demons, Ron Howard’s sequel to The Da Vinci Code both adaptations of Dan Brown’s books, and at least in my opinion, a better movie than The Da Vinci Code.

Howard packs quite a bit in this film and even with a 2 hour and 20 minute run time, it runs at a pretty brisk pace, especially in comparison to the prior film, and the main reason for that is more a focus on keeping this closer to an action film, and it doesn’t hurt here at all.

Tom Hanks returns to play the part of Langdon, and while this is no real stretch of Hanks’ skills, he’s rock solid in the part. He’s backed up with an international cast including Ewan McGregor, Avelut Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard and Armin Mueller-Stahl and they all do what’s asked of them here pretty well, especially McGregor and Skarsgard, though really this doesn’t necessarily ask that much of them, other than to fill the stock parts of a thriller.

I’ve not read the books, so I can’t say anything as to how faithful they are. And even though I enjoyed this, I do have one complaint and that’s that it’s red herring ending is a little too obvious when it happens- this moment happens, seems like it could be logical, but deep down you know it’s not and that more has to come about . It still works here, but just seems a little too familiar.

Still though, Angels & Demons is a nice diversion and I do recommend it, but your mileage may vary depending on what you thought of both the books and the prior adaptation of The Da Vinci Code. From what I’ve read, it you’re expecting a hardcore adaptation, you might really be disappointed. I wouldn’t really say that this is “must see” summer movie viewing, but still I had a good time with it.

We’ll keep this pretty basic: A hell-bent on revenge Romulan named Nero has set his target on the Federation of Planets and in particular the planet Vulcan and through this, we see how the most familiar crew of the Starship Enterprise gets together in order to stop him…

… oh yeah, it’s also the re-vamp of a very tired franchise from one of the hottest creative forces in Hollywood today…

… and yes, it’s very good, really very good, I’m talking Wrath of Khan good…

Star Trek from director J.J. Abrams has been much anticipated by yours truly since he first heard that Abrams was involved with it. And the ideas that Abrams had about using a very young cast, re-casting the roles of the original series was to me anyway, the shot in the arm that this venerable franchise really needed. I originally wanted him to go further and pretty much ignore everything but the basics and just put his stamp on it. But Abrams and his writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (his co-conspirators on Fringe) decided to tie it in with original continuity as well, and though I thought it might hurt it to saddle it with that, I’ve got to say that I thought the end result was very satisfying- they’ve essentially found a way to do a new version and still keep the continuity of the old intact.

This is a packed movie- there’s a lot that’s happening here and to Abrams’ credit, I’m amazed at how much he does pack into this slightly over two hour long film. Every one of the main characters gets their shot on the screen with obviously Kirk and Spock getting the most time, but still no one else is left wanting. On top of that, the ideas of the future that Gene Roddenberry had are still very much intact, but this is paced in such a way, that at least in my eyes, it becomes a Star Trek that’s made more for an audience that’s more weened on and accepting of the Star Wars movies more.

The look of the movie is very fresh for the franchise, it’s bright and colorful and goes for shots that you haven’t necessarily seen before in the series. It retains some familiarity with the basic shape of the Enterprise, the structure of such things as the bridge of the ship and the transporter room, but allows itself to get a little more industrial with the engineering section. My favorite salute to the original series though is retaining the look of the classic series uniforms, though there are differences there too, but here, they look fresher than they ever have before.

High marks also for frequent Abrams co-conspirator Michael Giacchino’s music score, who keeps things sounding majestic and exciting and waiting until the exact right moments before some familiar sounds come to the forefront.

But where I give this real high marks is in this great cast that Abrams has assembled to reprise some classic roles- Chris Pine, who plays James T. Kirk has said that he hadn’t seen any of what William Shatner had done on the series prior to this, and he offers up something fresh, but thanks to the script and the direction, he has moments that feel you’re seeing that character start out in some familiar ways. Zachary Quinto, who we better know as Sylar from the Heroes TV series is Spock and he’s just dead on, and yet some new elements have been introduced for him that again makes this both familiar and fresh at the same time. Karl Urban plays Dr. Leonard McCoy and next to Simon Pegg playing Scotty, both look like they’re having the most fun in the world with their parts. Zoe Saldana plays Lt. Uhura, and her part is probably the one that gets the most expanded and updated from any of the main cast of the original series- she’s smart and sexy, and obviously gets to do a whole lot more than just open hailing frequencies. John Cho plays Sulu, and though probably the most quiet of the original crew re-vamps still has a strong inner confidence thanks to Cho. My one problem with the movie, and it’s a moot one, is with Anton Yelchin and his dialogue as Pavel Chekov- and it’s probably not so much with Yelchin in the part, but the fact that they insisted on really going overboard with Chekov’s mangling of “v’s” with “w’s” in his dialogue, and I’m just hoping they’ve gotten that out of their systems with this movie, and hopefully moving forward might temper this a bit more- like I said my only problem with the film, but still this is a very satisfying experience.

That’s just the main crew though, and it’s nice to see that Abrams decided to populate the rest of the film with some more familiar faces. Bruce Greenwood is always a rock in whatever he does and he’s no different as Captain Christopher Pike here. Ben Cross and Winona Ryder are quite solid as Spock’s parents, Sarek and Amanda, so no complaints there. but finally though, we have Leonard Nimoy as Spock and Eric Bana as Nero, and I have to say they’re both terrific, though one might’ve wanted one more scene for Bana. His Nero character is adequately explained here, but one more scene to punctuate that wouldn’t have hurt- and Nimoy reprising Spock in the context of this script is just fantastic, his final line… a great passing of the torch moment.

I was a huge Star Trek fan back when I was a younger, not during the original series run, but more discovering it when it ran in syndication and for years it was a huge influence on me. I loved the original crew movies (though will admit that The Final Frontier was the weakest of the bunch) and The Wrath of Khan was at the time a near-religious experience when I first saw it. I liked the Next Generation stuff when it started, more I think just for the excitement of having a new Star Trek again, though there was certainly a lot of good stuff over it’s run, but I thought that Rick Berman eventually drove this franchise into the ground, and it got more tired and antiseptic as other things like Babylon 5, Farscape, Firefly and Battlestar Galactica showed you could be more fresh and exciting with set-ups that owed to what Star Trek originally established. As the Next Generation movies came out, this got more staid and it was sad to see (at least in my eyes).

Well, no more… J.J. Abrams has truly delivered with Star Trek with an exciting story, incredible visual effects and most importantly a fantastic new cast in the parts of the very classic of all of the characters. This is the movie that I’ve been wanting to see for this franchise and it’s just terrific fun and the promise is there again. The only shame is that it will probably be another three years before we see another one, and this cast is so good that I just want to see another one with them a lot sooner than later…

Star Trek is back! And I for one couldn’t be more excited… if you can’t guess, this gets my highest recommendation- don’t miss it!

In this prequel story to the prior three X-Men movies, we see the beginnings of the Wolverine character and are offered glimpses at how he became to be what he is. He develops over the years into an expert combatant, and he’s done his job faithfully until one day when he’s had enough, and on that day he leaves and tries to find his own path of peace. And of course, for a movie like this, that just can’t go well for a moment.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a fun little action/adventure ride, that offers up a few nice plot points and easter eggs for X-Men comics fans, and it is a pretty decent ride… there’s lots of nice action bits, and three pretty cool performances from Hugh Jackman in the title role, Liev Schreiber as Victor Creed/Sabretooth and Danny Huston as Major William Stryker, a prequel version of the character that Brian Cox played in the second X-Men movie. Schreiber, in particular, looks like he’s having a real good time with this. There’s some cool nods to the various comic versions of the origins of Wolverine, primarily with the series Wolverine Origin by Paul Jenkins and Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith. And I think it has some decent, if not obvious, effects work. I’ve heard some complaints about the effects work here, but they don’t really bother me.

It’s a fun ride for what it is and that’s a fun popcorn movie, and there’s really nothing wrong with that, that’s obviously what Fox and Marvel Entertainment are striving for in this movie and for that, it’s a good time, but it also seems like a lesser effort in comparison to last year’s Iron Man and Incredible Hulk movies, though that’s also somewhat expected considering that Marvel has full control over those and not this one. That’s not saying that someone won’t have a good time here, just an observation.

It’s fun for what it is, but considering the sources, especially one of them for me in particular, one wonders just how much more this could’ve been, had those sources been more used. What I’m speaking of is Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith, which is in my view anyway, the very best Wolverine story ever told, and not exactly the fodder of what a summer entertainment action movie would be, but something that had it been more used as the focus, could’ve raised the bar considerably for this film. Weapon X is a truly terrifying and horrific story that in itself would make for one hell of a movie, and here, it’s just used as a means to an end for something that’s far more generic in movie terms, and again, there’s really nothing wrong with that. This is the movie that was chosen to be made and perhaps using something like that as the sole source of the film would’ve been too much of taking a chance with this franchise, because it surely isn’t atypical for a summer action movie. But with movies like The Dark Knight and Watchmen raising the bar, I’d kinda like to see the Marvel movies do a little of that as well.

But still it is a good time and it does have those little bits that are fun ties to the X-Men movie continuity. It’s a solid action movie diversion, though in the end, it just may not be as memorable as some of the other movies are.