According to Colwell

A common element in successful comedies based on farcical premises is a character whose reaction to the absurd events reflects the reaction of the audience. Think of Bill Murray in Ghostbusters, who wisecracking through battles with ridiculous ghosts let the audience know that the movie knows it is ridiculous. Or almost everyone in Galaxy Quest. Or think Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum. A large part of the charm and humor in that movie was Stiller’s night guard Larry reacting the way anyone would to museum pieces coming to dramatic and sometimes menacing life. With Larry, we got to discover that the T-Rex skeleton doesn’t want to eat him; he just wants to play fetch. The sequel, bearing the clumsy title Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (presumably we could not be trusted to make the connection if it had simply been titled Battle of the Smithsonian) lacks that wide-eyed and panicky discovery of the museum magic and also some of the laughs.

It is a shame that more use wasn’t made of Jonah Hill as a quirky Smithsonian night guard (his appearance in the movie is not even credited). When he asks Larry “like what kind of stuff?” in response to Larry’s melodramatic allusions to the events of the first “Night”, I was really looking forward to Hill’s character getting a first-hand look. Instead, Larry makes what is essentially a repeat of his previous adventures, but without him having to figure out what is going on. Amy Adams and Hank Azaria get the most possible out of their portrayals of Amelia Earhart and a megalomaniacal pharaoh. And there are plenty of clever moments (Rodin’s The Thinker turns out to be a dunce; the bobblehead Einsteins in the gift shop have all the answers; Bill Hader’s General Custer is a lousy tactician) that make this movie a fun diversion if not as originally clever as the original.

Zac Efron was getting a lot of good buzz for his first star turn in a major motion picture, and I think Matthew Perry has great comic timing, so we gave this movie a shot. It succeeds at what it is, but unfortunately for me, what it is is a movie for teenagers and young adults and people who really like to look at Zac Efron a lot.

State of Play is a political thriller based on a 6-part BBC miniseries with as many plot reversals as this year’s Duplicity, but operates on a much more serious plane. Ben Affleck plays Congressman Stephen Collins who is investigating a security company (think Blackwater) for war profiteering and other nasty business when his assistant researcher ends up dead under suspicious circumstances. Russell Crowe plays investigative reporter Cal McAffrey who drives a beat up old car with garbage in the back seat, long straggly hair, a cubical plastered with old newspaper stories and post-its, and a voice that sounds like it was recorded with a microphone on a much lower setting than every other actor in the movie. When Collins, who also happens to be Cal’s former college roommate, turns to Cal when rumors of an affair between him and his research surface, Cal goes into full investigative mode, and nothing will get between him and the truth. Not wide-eyed naive political blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) who is assigned to work with him, not the newspaper’s editor (Helen Mirren) who lectures Cal and the audience on the imminent collapse of newspapers because they are not running enough sensationalistic stories, and certainly not the killers who are busy knocking off everyone with any information about the death of Collins’ assistant.

While it is at times heavy-handed, the story is taut, and the performances are compelling (including a great turn by Jason Bateman as a slimeball in a small role). I was fully caught up in the movie until the last set of plot twists and denouement. Sprung rather rapidly at the end, I don’t actually think the outcome of the movie makes logical sense. I’ll explain why in a comment since it’s a major spoiler.

I love Star Trek. I’m using the word “love” in connection with a television and movie franchise. So it was with some trepidation that I went to see Star Trek, the new movie that is “not your father’s Star Trek.” You see, I am the “father” the ads refer to. But while the original Star Trek, the television show that ran for three seasons in the late sixties, was great for my generation and for the time that it was produced, and while it had underlying themes that I truly believe are timeless and important (see first sentence above), it is not going to win any ratings wars in the twenty-first century. For Star Trek to continue as a living and evolving work of entertainment with a dose of pop philosophy thrown in, even I have to admit it needed what has been called a “reboot”. So, youngsters, Star Trek is now in your hands. It will evolve into a new body of work, and it will take some time before we know whether it has the same cultural impact that the original had. For the moment there are no musings on the evolution of the species, no discourses on the process of overcoming animal instincts, no cultural barriers shattered. This Star Trek will have to find its own walls to topple.

[Spoiler Alert]
With this new movie, Star Trek has definitely been rebooted. While Star Trek purists cringe when a new movie or TV episode appears to contradict part of the Star Trek canon, I have never cared much about that. And I expected that the creative team behind the new movie wouldn’t care much either. After all, this Star Trek is designed to appeal to people who may know the phrase “beam me up, Scotty,” not to people who know that that line was never uttered in Star Trek. I was perfectly content with the idea that they would create a story that would contradict canon.

I can’t say for certain that they did care about avoiding conflict with Star Trek canon, but avoid it they did. Time travel, a device that is frequently used in Trek, is used in the new movie to rewrite history. Before the movie’s title appears, the past of the Trek universe gets effectively erased by an angry Romulan from the 24th century who travels back to the time of Kirk’s birth and wreaks havoc. Thus, the story of Kirk and all the rest of our beloved characters can be written on a clean slate. It cannot contradict all the references from Star Treks past, because now those Star Treks never happen. Or happened. Depending on how you look at it. The future, from the moment of Kirk’s birth, will be different than all those hundreds of hours of TV and movie Trek. The stories of Shatner’s Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Benjamin Sisko and Kathryn Janeway are now part of an alternate timeline. If Star Trek is a story about our future, then their stories are no longer part of our imagined future.

Should I throw out all my DVDs? As I said, I’m not a purist. Still, I walked out of the theater feeling, I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit, a faint sense of mourning for all those wonderful fictional adventures that have now been fictionally rendered part of a timeline that will not come to pass in this new fictional universe. Does it matter that Kirk will not fall in love with Edith Keeler? When I watch Picard battle the Borg will I care less about the outcome because in this new movie Nero goes back in time and rewrites history so that the battle never happens (or happens differently)? To be honest, I don’t know.

All that, without a word about the movie itself. The movie is thoroughly enjoyable. While there are moments when it seems that J.J. Abrams was emulating the swooping, zooming, panning shots of “So You Think You Can Dance”, it is a taut adventure that still manages to flesh out the characters of Kirk and Spock. There are a couple of action set pieces, such as when a boyish Kirk steals a car and drives it off a cliff in the middle of Iowa for no reason, that seem to be there merely to provide another action scene. And there are painfully corny science fiction gizmos (”red matter” anyone?). But the movie works terrifically well. It is densely packed, and yet follows a clear arc. Kirk and Spock are given plenty of issues to work through, mainly concerning their parents, but also each other and their place in the world.

There is a torture scene by the genocidal villain: Christopher Pike is strapped to a table over a tank of water. While his fate is not drowning, simulated or otherwise, it did bring waterboarding instantly to mind. Perhaps this Trek is already dipping a toe into the sea of social and political commentary. It is exciting to imagine the adventures in store for the new crew of the Enterprise. For while the names are the same, it is clear that they will become their own distinct versions of Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Chekov, Sulu, and Uhura. And that’s what Star Trek needs if it is to survive half as long in the twenty-first century as it did in the twentieth. Just be mindful that 20 or 30 years from now someone may decide that Star Trek needs to be rebooted again and that everything that happens in this movie and those that follow is actually - a dream.

This post is long overdue in the sense that I try to get movie reviews up within a day or two of me seeing the movie. But the movie Fados is not your typical movie, and I have very little to say about. I like Fado, the traditional Portuguese folk music, well enough. But not two hours worth. The movie is a series of Fado songs sung by different artists representing various different aspects of the Fado tradition. The songs are offered with no commentary aside from the occasional subtitle. If you love Fado music, rent it.