RoboCop [2014]

Rating: ***

Don’t hate RoboCop because it’s a remake of a beloved sci-fi classic, hate it because it’s a tepid and blandish spin on the original film that thinks the best way to re-energize the concept it to go all the places that first one didn’t. Sometimes you do get it right the first time, and sometimes doing things because you can isn’t really a good enough reason for you to go through with it. Having said that, there are some interesting ideas in the new 2014 RoboCop, and some very interesting actors who try to realize them, but essentially this new Cop is a B-effort for a C-movie.

Let’s try and keep the comparisons to a minimum, but I will begin by saying that Joel Kinnaman brings something different to the role of Alex Murphy. Peter Weller as Murphy was just far too good a guy with his easy smile, laid back manner, and the little trick with his side arm that he learned in order do to impress his kid. Kinnaman is more intense, and more driven. That might be because his cause is more personal as Murphy is blown up in a car bomb placed by a flunky of an arms dealer Murphy and his partner Lewis (Michael K. Williams) are investigating, thus forcing his transformation into RoboCop. It’s not like getting your hand blown off and then taking about 20,000 rounds of ammo in every possible body part, but then again, this is a PG-13 effort.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into Darkness endeavours to boldly go in strange new directions with what's expected of the franchise, and in doing so they re-visit the most obvious portion of Trek lore that the filmmakers could have possibly chosen from. What happens isn't uninteresting, but I think that this time the fans who were especially mad at the liberties J.J. Abrams took with Star Trek in the 2009 reboot, will find new reason to loathe what the director has done with Into Darkness.

The reality though is that Into Darkness is another above par, rollicking space adventure firmly and ably executed by Abrams and Co. It may not be what fans are expecting, and it really doesn't need to be, but on its own I think it accomplishes the goals that were set out when the first film was released in 2009, which was reinventing Star Trek to be a franchise meant for mass consumption again. If the intention and tone of the film ended there, then fine, but then the third act of this film is borrowed wholesale from a previous Trek outing, and it's done so blatantly, even those only casually familiar with previous Star Trek works couldn't blame fans for their anger. 

Cloud Atlas

There are a lot of people out there who are going to love Cloud Atlas. Reversely, there are a lot of people out there who are going to hate Cloud Atlas. Me? I sat in the theater intrigued, enthralled and more than a little impressed that such box office heavyweights – including Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Hugh Grant – and major Hollywood studio would throw their weight behind such an ambitious project with relatively little chance of return on investment.

Cloud Atlas spans no less than six stories that take place in the past, recent past, present, future, and far future. Several of the actors play multiple parts in all six storylines, which builds on and sells the film’s themes of life, truth, and the inter-connectivity of all people across the barriers of time and space. It’s a classic science fiction story of big ideas, and that’s in spite of the fact that several of the stories don’t even have what would conventionally be considered science fiction elements.

In the 1830s, a young lawyer tries to help a stowaway slave on a boat ride to San Francisco as the ship’s doctor tries to poison him. In 1930s Scotland, a young gay man leaves his lover and becomes apprentice to an aging composer. Forty years later, an ambitious reporter falls into a story of deadly, corporate corruption. In present day London, a book publisher becomes a victim of circumstance as he goes from having a best selling novel to ending up forcible indentured in a nursing home. In the early 22nd century, service industry workers are slave labor to a society of consumers, until one woman becomes a symbol for equality. And in the very far future, 100 years “after the fall,” a scientist seeks the means to contact Earth’s off-world colonies with the help of a simple, almost prehistoric like people.

Aside from the actors, directors Tom Tykwer, Lana Wachowski and Andy Wachowski weave light threads between each of the various stories. But what’s especially impressive is that they don’t dumb anything down. The film opens with a Hanks’ character from the far future story, sitting in front of a fire delivering a soliloquy, like the beginning of a Shakespeare play. We then get introductory glimpses into each of the other stories, they go by in a flash and as you struggle to keep up you’re getting a sense of the larger work at play. Fortunately, the directors take it easy on us and throttle back to to ease us into the story on each level. Where it goes from there is up to you, the viewer, I think.

The problem with Cloud Atlas is that people’s whose taste rarely tread beyond the typical Hollywood hogwash are going to be blown away with just how deep this movie is. I remember when Inception came out in the summer of 2010 and hearing people talk about how complex it was, and how one almost had to bring a notepad into the cinema with them to keep everything straight. When I saw Inception a couple of weeks later, this proverbial Rubix cube of a maze of a Chinese finger trap of a film never materialized. Sure, it was complex, but I didn’t need a program to keep it all straight.

Another apt comparison might be Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, an art house hit and Academy Award nominee that many felt was given a free pass to deep thematic appreciation because no one wanted to admit that the didn’t get lest they were perceived by the rest of the audience as being stupid. Some of that comes into play in Cloud Atlas, but Tykwer and the Wachowskis are speaking with a clear voice. Granted, they’re reaching back to deal with some of the same stuff they dealt with in the first Matrix, but unlike, say, Speed Racer, it seems like they have something to say again with this film.

And some of it works better than others, and sometimes it seems certain stories are put on pause for too long as attention is drawn to other areas. The chapter that takes place at sea in 1839 was surprisingly lifeless most of the time, but Jim Broadbent as the publisher that ends up trapped in the nursing home with a Nurse Ratched tormentor played by Hugo Weaving had some great highlights and some very funny scenes. There are some rather derivative beats in the 193os music plot and the 1970s business corruption story, but the performances make it work. For style points though it goes to the 22nd century adventure in Neo- Seoul, which realizes better than any other live-action film the vibe and aesthetic of Japanese anime classics like Akira and Ghosts in the Machine.

In the end, Cloud Atlas maybe a case of the parts on their own being greater than the sum. One watches the film transfixed, which is a marvel at the nearly three hour running time. Established Hollywood filmmakers like the Wachowskis are rarely this brazen, or this bold, and I feel that if nothing else, Cloud Atlas should be saluted in those terms. It’s challenging in all the good ways a film should be challenging, but its far from perfect, and in the conflict between those two facts lies the lightening rod that fans will be discussing this film around now and into the future.

On a final note, you may remember the release of Prometheus early this year was the film that was supposed to save big budget science fiction filmmaking, and you may remember how well that turned out. More to the point, I would say that Cloud Atlas fills that order. It suffers from the same problem of thinking itself more ambitious than it actually is, but in terms of audacity and scale, then Cloud Atlas definitely trumps Prometheus. But perhaps that will be the debate of 2012, which movie speaks to the future more…

Iron Sky

Rating: **1/2

Iron Sky is a science fiction movie where in events transpired are taken from real life inspirations that are so implausible, the sheer notion of it is absolutely laughable: a Sarah Palin presidency. Kidding aside, what we have here is a film that helped set the mould for the whole crowd-sourcing phenomenon; millions of dollars raised from fans the world over based on the ludicrous, but oh-so-camp ready premise that in 1945 Nazis escaped from the Earth and set up a base on the moon where they silently wait to strike back.

But Iron Sky and its filmmakers are not content to tell a simple story of Nazis on the moon, they seemed to want to build a political satire in the vein of Dr. Strangelove around the absurdist idea too. Unfortunately though, the notion seems a bit out of date. The prospect of a Sarah Palin presidency is less and less likely with each year since her failed vice-presidency bid, and with each moronic social media release of Fox News appearance.

The film starts with an American mission to the moon, and an attempt by the erstwhile President Palin (Stephanie Paul) to reignite the American spirit of accomplishment and industriousness. Astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby) soon discovers the Nazi settlement during his moon walk and is taken prisoner by the Third Reich. With Washington’s smart phone, the Nazi scientists find the Rosetta stone they need to launch their war machines against the Earth. Revenge has come after 73 years.

Naturally, the whole thing ends up in a giant space battle as the warships of the Earth, including the American-made, improbably named USS George W. Bush, battling the Nazi’s crazy zeppelin/rocket ship concoctions in Earth orbit. For what is essentially an independent movie, Iron Sky boasts some impressive effects work, but since George Lucas introduced the idea of airplane dog fights in space in ’77, it’s a field well hoed. Still, the effects artists behind Iron Sky deserve a pat on the back for doing so much with so little.

As for the film itself, I appreciate that the filmmakers going full Strangelove with the ending, but the movie’s humour is rather hit and miss. I was one of the few in the theatre to get the subtle reference to Downfall, and all the various memes that have been based upon it, and Peta Sergeant really owns that scene. Julia Dietze is good as Renate Richter, the Nazi idealist that has some bizarrely sunny ideas about the National Socialist Party, and Dietze really throws herself in the part. And Udo Kier, as the head of the Moon Nazis, is appropriately over the top with the scenery chewing.

The film itself though struggles between being a small scale blockbuster-like romp and a tongue-in-cheek political commentary. Putting those two things together is like trying to combine candy and broccoli, and although I think some clever person could probably do it in an effective way, the creators of Iron Sky are not them. It’s a noble experiment, and it was committed to with zest and flare, but Iron Sky just can’t lift off and be more than that “Nazis on the Moon” movie. And that’s really a shame.

Total Recall (2012)

Rating: **

So outraged were some of the nerdery that when it was announced they were remaking Total Recall, many people acted like someone said Citizen Kane, or Casablanca. The original Total Recall, although definitely with its own charm, is hardly the type of seminal science fiction film, like 2001 or Star Wars, that should probably defy the odds of re-imagining. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, remakes, as a trend, is not necessarily something we need fear. There's a fine tradition of remakes sometimes exceeding the original, like John Carpenter's The Thing of the Humphrey Bogart-starring Maltese Falcon. Even in music there's the long proud tradition of the cover song.

But let's not to get your hopes up. Total Recall, the 2012 edition, is not in anyway an improvement on the Paul Verhoeven version from 1990. This one's directed by Len Wiseman with the general feeling that before undertaking the film he sat down one weekend and watched Star Wars, Blade Runner, and Die Hard a couple of dozen times. There are storm troopers, gravity cars, rain-soaked futuristic cityscapes and an everyman hero in over his head being pursued by a pair of dangerous women. One of them is being played by an actress married to the director.

Colin Farrell plays Douglas Quaid in this new Recall replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger. He too has a menial job, a hot wife and longs for something more of the secret agent variety, and he too has seen the ads for Rekall and wonders if he can get away for a couple of hours into an action-packed fantasy. The difference this time is that Quaid doesn't have to get his ass to Mars, the action's happening right here on Planet Earth, were an ecological disaster has rendered only two parts of Earth unscorched: England and Australia. Workers from Australia serve the decadent Britons via an elevator that spans the planet called "The Fall." And there are some nefarious seeds a-doin' as Britain seems to be making a move to reclaim Australia.

This is where Quaid comes in. He knows... Something, and the evil British Empire of the Future are prepared to do anything to keep him from remembering. Or maybe they want him to remember. Or maybe they want him to think he's still plain old Doug Quaid to keep him out of the equation. Perhaps they want him to turn back into Hauser so that he can lead them to the rebel Matthias. Either way, Quaid's pretty, American-accented EMT wife is a butt-kicking, British-accented assassin out to kill him. But on the other hand, there's the idealistic, equally action-capable and lovely sidekick that picks up Quaid and promises to help lead him to the truth. But which truth is the truth?

The original Total Recall was a thinly-veiled meat-head blockbuster filled with Arnold-ready catchphrases and over-the-top violence. Who cares if nothing about it vaguely makes any kind of sense? It was awesome for the sake of being awesome! I wish this Total Recall had that kind of self-awareness. While I appreciate any attempt to make an empty-calorie summer blockbuster more deeper than a shallow pond, Recall's mish-mash of greatest hits and the surprisingly long shadow of the original film create a difficult double hurdle for the filmmakers to vault.

In its favour, Recall has exception production design acumen, and I can tell that Kate Beckinsale relished stepping into Sharon Stone's well-worn bitch boots, but the screenplay's attempt to craft a puzzle out of the conundrum of what's real and unreal is more akin to a jumble than the New York Times crossword puzzle. The normally reliable Bryan Cranston seems to be working overtime to channel Ronny Cox, and Jessica Biel is remembered more for being a vague presence than actual creating a memorable character.

As for the man behind it all, director Len Wiseman, I think the best thing of him is to get away from the remakes and sequels. I may not have liked Sucker Punch, but I've got to give Zack Snyder a hand for at least recognizing that he can't build a whole career as a filmmaker reveling the ideas of others. Considering that much of what counts as "originality" in Total Recall is totally derived from other, better movies, Wiseman should approach the idea that he should be generated, at the very least, original stories that he could then integrate the recycled details. And as for the fans out there who were against this from the beginning, congratulations! Your sacred cow remains intact.

Battleship

Rating: **

Has there ever been a movie more likely to be doomed to creative folly? Not since producers at Disney ludicrously suggested that their theme park ride “Pirates of the Caribbean” would make a great basis for a film, has the twin demons of brand recognition and built-in fanbase been so egregiously exploited. Although I’m hardly comparing Battleship to Curse of the Black Pearl, both films yield some unexpected results. In this instance, the result is that Battleship, as pure popcorn entertainment, isn’t a complete waste of your time.

What’s interesting is that director Peter Berg is really working his butt off to channel Michael Bay, but naturally being Berg he can’t out-do the master. Nobody’s going to confuse Bay’s Transformers films with high art, nor will they with Berg’s Battleship for that matter. But in the case of the Battleship, I see a bizarre attempt to make something more than a by-the-numbers sci-fi action epic. In much the same way as Berg’s Hancock, a nearly post-modern take at Superman and the hero myth, it seems that half a good idea is better than no idea at all.

Still, we must confront the notion that this film is based on a board game, and I would say you can tell by the woodenness of the actors involved, but the actual game was made out of plastic. The somewhat pathetic excuse for an emotional through line involves Lieutenant Alex Hopper (Taylor Kitsch), a man so gifted at the art of screwing up he’s about to be washed out of the navy despite having high aptitudes, an important position on his ship as chief weapons officer, and, as we learn later, he’s improbably one of the highest-ranking officers on his boat.

The entire set-up for the film is inane and predictable. Hopper is a malcontent, a rascal. He’s incorrigible and his older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård), a navy captain with a bright and accomplished future, is always yelling at him to straighten up and fly right (as it were). Alex wants to marry Sam, but her father (Liam Neeson) is a powerful naval admiral who’s about as likely to give his approval as he is to confuse a destroyer with a submarine. Alex is a hot head that needs a lesson in humility, a rebel without a cause, a slacker looking for a reason… Naturally, he’s the only man that can save us when evil aliens come a calling.

But in all seriousness, if Berg had shaved the first hour and gotten right into the fighting, I think people might be more willing to give Battleship a pass. Nods to the game are incorporated in surprisingly inventive ways: the alien’s mortar fire resembles the game’s plastic pegs, and one of the key action scenes involves Hopper’s ship using tsunami warning buoys to form a grid pattern so that they can hunt the alien ships at night.

I also like how Berg has a genuine appreciate for military people in uniform beyond their being puppeteered for cool action sequences. One of the heroes is a veteran, a double amputee whose physiotherapist is Sam, and the film’s climax – without getting into spoilers- involves World War II vets fighting alongside the young pups to deal the aliens a final, crushing blow. The whole movie thinks that it’s going to break out of its cocoon of mediocrity to become something rather unique, but for whatever reason it just can’t seem to get there.

But for all the innovation Berg attempts to bring to the story, the film is horribly anchored (pun intended) by the usual action movie tropes like the arrogant man-child hero, the doting girlfriend, the loyal best friend, and the terse but well-meaning mentor figure. The motivation of the aliens is never explained, which is a mixed blessing, but then again the whole plot is centred around aliens parking their small fleet off shore near Hawaii so that they can access a satellite array to call in their larger armada. “Sure, we can span the universe in our powerful ships, but can we borrow your phone?”

But for better or for worse, the movie will be judged by the fact that it’s based on a board game, and unlike that previously referenced Pirate movie, the end result does nothing to make the audience believe that the people behind it care. When they talk about bland studio product, Battleship is the next best example, and it’s all the more frustrating given what Berg & Co. seem to want to do with the damn thing. Hopefully the movies based on Ouija and Monopoly will bear sweeter fruit.

The Hunger Games

Rating: ****

Already breaking records and taking names, The Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’ best-selling young adult novel, is playing the box office game like a career tribute, and if you’ve got that reference then you’ve probably already been to theatre and/or have your ticket to go sometime this weekend.

The Hunger Games is a literary phenomenon on par with, though not yet as successful as, Harry Potter and Twilight. Still, Hunger has captured a lot of imaginations because of its quick-witted, independent hero Katniss Everdeen, and for testing the boundaries of youth fiction by portraying, quite honestly, the brutality and savagery of the world it takes place in. The film carries over some of that, but being a Hollywood film, a lot of the raw edges of the story are smoothed out to a degree.

For the benefit of fans of all stripes, I’ve decided to split this review for those who haven’t read the book, and for those of you that have. If you haven’t read the book, I’ll tell you when to stop reading because we’ll be then getting in to spoiler territory.

In the country of Panem (AKA: future North America), the powerful and decadent Capitol subjugates the 12 districts of the nation by making them go through the yearly ritual of The Hunger Games. Two “tributes” are chosen from the 12 to 18-year-olds of each district, and they’re taken to the Capitol, turned into a combination of celebrity and Olympian, appraised for their skill and let loose in an enclosed outdoor area to battle it out till only one of them is left. The Games are an important reminder to the people who’s in charge, otherwise the tyrannical Capitol leaves itself open to another rebellion.

Our hero Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) lives in District 12 (formally West Virginia) with her widowed mother and younger sister Prim. Katniss is the bread winner, hunting in the forbidden forest with her trusty bow and arrow to put food on the table. At the annual reaping, the day when the contestants for the Games are chosen, Prim’s name is drawn, but Katniss volunteers to take her place. Also representing District 12 is Peeta (Josh Hutchison), the baker’s son. The film follows Katniss and Peeta as they’re taken to the Capitol, given prep for the Games, and eventually make their way to the arena.

Director Gary Ross builds a believable dystopia. District 12 itself kind of looks like a blend of a depression era mining town and the futuristic old west of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, while the Capitol is a bright, shiny Star Trek future where everyone dresses like it’s The Fifth Element. Ross, the director behind acclaimed, though low-key, hits like Seabiscuit and Pleasantville, also shows himself able to handle action well. The film was well-paced and although there’s an over-reliance on shaky cam, I can forgive it since it was used, for the most part, to veil the extreme imagery of child on child violence.

Lawrence takes full-advantage of the three-dimensionality of Katniss’ character, maybe one of the most complexly written in modern youth fiction. She’s able to convey all aspects of Katniss, from her strength and resourcefulness to her vulnerability and the few moments she entertains girlish notions of romance. By comparison, Hutchinson has a tough time keeping up, but in the few moments that Peeta takes the spotlight solo, like the interview scene before the Games, Hutchinson takes full advantage. Amongst the supporting cast, Elizabeth Banks is a standout as Effie Trinket the Capitol delegate helping to chaperone Katniss and Peeta, and Lenny Kravitz keeps it cool as Cinna, Katniss’ stylist and one of the few people she can truly trust in the Capitol.

Overall, The Hunger Games, as a film, provides solid adventure, interesting characters, and a couple of moral quandaries that together is well-told with both style and grace. It’s a worthy blockbuster due to the intricacy of the story and the commitment of those involved. It’s not fluffy like a certain book-turned-movie about vampires, but it’s not as a hard-boiled as a certain Japanese movie with an eerily similar plot. Best of all, the film leaves you with an eager sense of anticipation to see where the next film in the story will takes us, which is good because there are two more books to be adapted, and given the cash The Hunger Games has made so far, we should be hearing about those sooner rather than later.

This next part is for those fans that have read the book, so there will be spoilers from this point on. Read at your own risk.

Now obviously when you adapt a book into a movie, changes are inevitable. Sometimes this streamlines the plot and keeps the action moving without losing important character moments, but usually it means losing a bit a of the subtlety from the original book, a few stray details that are interesting but superfluous. Ultimately, these things only matter to the people who freak because Hagrid’s cabin is in the wrong place in the Harry Potter movies; everyone else just goes with it.

In the case of The Hunger Games, we speed through a lot of Katniss and Peeta’s adventures in the Capitol in order to economically get them from District 12 to the Games. Interesting asides like the story behind the Avoxes is lost, and the tributes’ training is little more than a montage. On the other hand characters like President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and Gamesmaster Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) get expanded roles, which add brief but fascinating glimpses into the far reaching implications of Katniss’ defiance in the Games.

Of course, this part was problematic too because Ross throws in some allusions to the coming strife. Rue’s death in the film is followed by an all-out riot in District 11, as opposed to the more understated act of District 11 sending Katniss some bread as thanks in the book, which I liked better. Still, the film nailed Snow’s resentment towards Katniss, and the scene where he crowns her champion of the Hunger Games is fraught with tension beneath the surface. The final shot of the film is of Snow watching Katniss and Peeta’s return to District 12 with a look on his face that says, “I’ll get you next time, Katniss Everdeen! Next time!”

But Sutherland does own that part, and so does the aforementioned Banks, who brings Effie to such vivid life it’s like she jumped right off the page. Stanley Tucci also owns as Caesar Flickerman with a bright blue ponytail, and just about all the young actors that play the tributes fill their parts well. The one casting hiccup I thought was Woody Harrelson, who seemed a lot more like he was playing Woody Harrelson than he was Haymitch Abernathy. There were some scenes when Haymitch’s hauntedness and inner-turmoil shines through Harrelson’s persona, but personally I would have loved to see what original choice John C. Reilly could have done with the part.

Overall I think the richness of the text and its various themes and subtexts come out of the editing room intact. What’s lost, like Katniss’ days long search for water and Peeta’s elongated convalescence, I’m good without if only that these reinforce the main characters humility and self-doubt through her inner-monologue; in a film they wouldn’t play nearly as well. Fans of The Hunger Games can be assured that your favourite book looks good on the big screen, but if you’re miffed that Katniss’ backpack isn’t coloured bright orange like in the book, I can’t help you. But hey, may the odds be ever in your favour that the movie will tank because of the creators’ lack of attention to detail.

Browncoats: Redemption

Rating: ***

The fan film is a delicate thing; you don’t have the budget to give the story its due, and the fan enthusiasm for original work can sometimes overwhelm the creation of quality drama. Then there’s the other thing: promotion. Anybody with enough money and technical skill can make a fan film, but it takes a special skill to beat the odds and make a name for yourself. Or an angle.

In the case of BROWNCOATS: REDEMPTION, the angle is charity. Any profits from the film are going to charity, and in return the film has been given unprecedented support, including an acting reprise from a couple of well-known faces from the FIREFLY universe. But to the credit of the filmmakers, they don’t rely on cache alone. There is some atypical skill in the making of REDEMPTION, but still, you may be entering fan only territory when you put it into the DVD player.

The timeline of the film follows SERENITY. The Alliance, bruised from the revelations of the film, is out to quash any and all resistance to the galactic parliament. The first target is the Scarab-class freighter Redemption, which, like a certain other bug-themed vessel, is staffed by a crew of antiestablishment types trying to irk out a living on the frontier. Lieutenant Colonel Thadeus Stevens is a duty bound operative of the Alliance, and he is the one assigned to rein in all Browncoats ready to rebel again.

The production standards on the film are surprisingly solid. The spaceship sets were pretty convincing, and were built pretty close to the original production design of the Serenity spaceship in FIREFLY. The planet side settings were another story though. I’m not sure where those scenes were shot, but there are a lot of small towns around Southwestern Ontario that could have easily been subbed in. The Maryland countryside is also very different from the Old West backlots of Hollywood, but the filmmakers make do.

The script is where the film shows true inventiveness and allows it to stand apart from your typical fan film. Sometimes director/screenwriter Michael C. Dougherty tries too hard to emulate Joss Whedon’s syntax and phrasing, but when the script relaxes and lets the story play out it becomes less self-conscious and more able to stand on its own. There are some twists and some interesting characters, but I think at times the film is a little overstuffed.

On the other hand, the film has fun with some genuine FIREFLY/SERENITY cameos from Michael Fairman (Niska) and Yan and Rafael Feldman (Fanty and Mingo). Additionally, series’ star Adam Baldwin is seen briefly as Lt. Col. Stevens secretary, where he makes the famous John Casey grunt from CHUCK, and thus prompting two different sets of sci-fi fans to punch the air. It’s nice that these actors feel such kinship for the material that they appeared in a fan production. It adds that little extra feeling of authenticity.

For a first time effort by a filmmaker, BROWNCOATS: REDEMPTION offers superior return on investment, but it’s one of those films that makes you feel like you’re grading on a curve. True, this is better than it has a right to be, but are we judging it based on those criteria? I hope not. But for fans of the franchise, this movie is a pretty solid way to satiate your jones for fresh FIREFLY material. And it’s Whedon approved to boot.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Rating: ***

These Transformers movies are the very definition of critic-proof. Anyone with a keyboard and opinion will tell you that the first two movies based on the popular 80s toy line, especially part two, radically redefined awfulness. Yet still, somehow, Revenge of the Fallen’s final box office tally landed just shy of $1 billion USD worldwide. So what’s the appeal? Big robots, big explosions, hot chicks and the usual “Bayhem.” All true, but how about a story? Compelling drama? Character development?

Well there’s none of that in this third Transformers movie Dark of the Moon. Actually, that’s not fair. As compared to Revenge, which suffered the dual indignities of being developed during the Writers Strike and on the narrative whims of Bay himself, Dark of the Moon is a Homer-like epic wrought with shifting allegiances, gripping motivations and big robots, big explosions, hot chicks and “Bayhem.”

Dark of the Moon is popcorn filmmaking at its finest, and it’s probably the most standout use of the 3-D format since James Cameron’s Avatar. The fascinating repercussion of Bay’s using 3-D is that he has to slow his shots down. Instead of his usual one or two second quick cuts, his shots are longer, wider and sweeping. In short, 3-D has made Bay a better filmmaker, and there aren’t a lot of films and filmmakers that you can say that about. Additionally, the film’s final bombastic hour, which makes Dresden look like a post-Stanley Cup game riot, manages to not overload the senses and makes complete and total visual sense.

The story is rather simple. Our hero Sam (once again essayed by “The Beef” himself Shia LaBeouf) is out of college and looking for work, but like a lot of recent college grads good work is scarce. However, unlike a lot of recent college grads, Sam has an incredibly hot girlfriend that looks like a lingerie model (because she’s played by one, in this case Rosie Huntington-Whiteley). Megan Fox’s girlfriend character is dismissed with a couple of lines, so that this film is entirely about Carly, who has a good job with her unusually smug boss Patrick Dempsey, while Sam gets an entry level gig at a software firm fronted by John Malkovich, who in a bizarre turn seems to be channelling Nicolas Cage.

On the killer robot front, the evil Decepticons are chilling in Africa, as the good Autobots are working with American soldiers to kick butt worldwide. The central plot, like X-Men: First Class, plays revisionist history with the 60s, presuming that the space race to the Moon was really a race to capture Transformers technology. When Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, learns from Director of National Intelligence Mearing (Frances McDormand) about the mission, he’s ticked. Investigating for themselves, the Autobots discover Sentinel Prime, Optimus’ predecessor and the last hope for freedom from Decepticon oppression.

Most of the things that irked fans about Revenge of the Fallen have been jettisoned: the racist robot twins, needless annoying sidekicks, ineffectual parental drug humour, long and unengaging plot exposition, and giant robot scrotum. By comparison, Dark of the Moon is lean and terse. Of course, lean and terse is relative when your movie is two and half hours long, but as compared to part two, which featured long stretches of dubious characterization and human drama, it was gratefully to the point.

But still, there’s the feeling that the human drama is superfluous and is maybe even really a placeholder in the film because the expense of having CG robots on screen for 150 minutes would be far too great. But I would argue that it’s not entirely true. Malkovich is great in the time he’s on screen, and Dempsey is at his douchey best as his true intention is revealed in the film’s second act. Even John Turturro’s ham as government agent and Transformers expert Simmons comes off fresh, and Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson’s soldier characters are always nearby with guns loaded, as is their function.

Basically, you’re not going into this film with any illusions. What you do need to know is that on a pure, popcorn, summer movie satisfactory level, Dark of the Moon delivers handily. It doesn’t test the intellect, but do you honestly want a brain-stimulating Transformers movie? No, what you want is big robots, big explosions, hot chicks and the usual “Bayhem” and on that basis Dark of the Moon is a mission accomplished. The difference being that this movie is literally adds another dimension, and this time, it’s worth the price of admission.

Super 8

****

The achievement of Super 8 isn’t that it seamlessly blends the minds, and influences, and styles of its two highly accomplished creators, producer Steven Spielberg and writer/director J.J. Abrams. Nope, what’s interesting is that up until you see the alien, which typically falls in the mould of the creatures in other Abrams-related efforts like Cloverfield and Star Trek, the whole endeavour feels like a lost Spielberg production from the mid-80s. Like something “The Beard” made between Poltergeist and The Goonies.

That’s probably a load off Abrams’ mind because one gets the impression watching Super 8 that the director wanted to pay tribute to one of the men that inspired him, using Spielberg’s tools and themes to create something unique, while at the same time being making it an homage, although that term seems almost dainty when considering the film.

What did Abrams borrow from Spielberg? The setting is a quiet Ohio suburb where ordinary kids encounter something extraordinary in their little hovel hometown. The film’s young protagonist, middle-schooler Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney), is trying to find common ground with his distant father just a few months after the accidental death of his mother. Meanwhile, Joe’s dad Jack (Kyle Chandler), a local sheriff’s deputy, struggles in his new role as sole parent, trying to connect to a son who’s into things he never was, creative things like monster make-up and constructing models. Hmm, I wonder who that sounds like.

But seriously, the distant relationship between child and single parent is an often visited theme in Spielberg’s work; like Elliot and his mom in E.T., the robot boy David and his adopted mother Monica in A.I. Artificial Intelligence or Ray Ferrier and his two children in War of the Worlds. The occasional tempestuous relationship between father and son has been explored by Abrams too, through Jack and his father on Lost, and through the Bishops on Fringe. Like in all those stories, extraordinary circumstances from an outside force brings parent and child together again, in the case of Super 8, that’s a military train carrying an imprisoned alien cross-country.

Abrams uses pure storytelling while unweaving Super 8. This is not a movie about going from spectacle to spectacle, although there is spectacle, but it’s a very down-to-earth story about being a kid, making a movie with your friends, and perhaps realizing the mortality of yourself and the world and maybe finding peace with it. The film doesn’t revolve around the escaped creature, it’s just part of the grand adventure. Again, Abrams uses his typical secrecy to his advantage, and you barely even see the alien until the last 15 minutes of the film.

Instead we open with a young Joe, sitting on the swings outside his house, as his mother’s wake goes on inside the home. Just months later, at the start of summer vacation, Joe helps his friend Charles (Riley Griffiths) work on a zombie movie along with cohorts Cary (Ryan Lee), Martin (Gabriel Basso) and Preston (Zach Mills). Charles invites a girl named Alice (Elle Fanning) to play the part of his lead character’s wife, all in the name of adding depth to his screenplay, but really, we all know it’s because Charles likes here. So you can imagine the tension when it becomes clear that Joe likes Alice, and that she likes him too.

But this isn’t a soap opera, just another uncomfortable facet of growing up. Abrams gets an incredibly genuine performance out of his young actors, and that’s another thing he has in common with his producer. The kids carry this movie and they’re more than up to the task. evading exploding train wrecks, escaping overturned buses and making their way through the eventual war zone their neighbourhood becomes. The military bad guys are palpable villains, especially Noah Emmerich as Col. Nelec. It’s kind of refreshing to see the U.S. military treated with that post-Vietnam cynicism and doubt again, it seems almost antithetical a notion in a post-9/11 world.

Also refreshing is seeing a blockbuster that can still dazzle while being grounded in reality. Made for a fraction of the cost of the Green Lanterns and the Transformers of the summer slate, Super 8 vividly realizes 1979 with cool call backs like Rubik’s cubes, Walkmans and kids with genuine hobbies like model-making. With the exception of the alien, there’s barely a whiff of green screen and CGI, although you know that it’s there. The action never feels overwhelming, and despite the extraordinary circumstances the characters and the story keep you invested in the film’s reality.

Even more interesting is that Super 8 finds the kid in you. It takes you back to simpler days and summer nights when anything really did seem possible, and that danger, while scary, was still sought for the adventure it led to. That’s the thing that separates Super 8 and the films of Spielberg’s past with kid-friendly adventures today, the filmmakers don’t feel the need to talk down to the kids, or try to reach adults with references to things only they get. Super 8 just is, and what it is, is the type of summer blockbuster that takes you back to the early-80s, or takes you there for the first time.

The DVD includes a tremendous commentary by Abrams, as well as two fascinating featurettes. The first deals with the development and creation of the creature featured in the film, and the second looks at Super 8’s origins. It includes stories from the super 8 youth of Abrams, co-producer Bryan Burk and director of photography Larry Fong, who all knew each other as teenagers, and how they all first encountered their idol Steven Spielberg and started working for him while they were still in high school. That second feature is a can’t miss.

X-Men: First Class

Rating: ****

Astonishing! Astounding! Uncanny! Three word X-Men fans might use about X-Men: First Class.

Surprised? So was I. This superhero franchise, desperately in need of a booster jump following the creative catastrophe of Last Stand, and the critical and commercial bomb of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, managed to do the impossible: deliver a Marvel film that contains no foreshadowing about The Avengers.

But seriously, Matthew Vaughn has managed to rejuvenate the X-Men brand and does so by breaking one of the assumptions in making a prequel – it can’t be surprising. Set against the Cuban Missile Crisis, the film has the feeling that someone transplanted the X-Men into the world of Sean Connery’s James Bond with sexy villainesses, exotic locales, and the world destroying threat of nuclear war. Scoff you may at the very notion, but the X-Men comics have spanned numerous genres, from space opera (anything with the Shi’ar and the Starjammers), to science fiction (“Days of Future Past”), to political commentary (“God Loves, Man Kills”) to horror (“Inferno”) and even humour (“X-Babies”).

Part origin story, part spy thriller, part relationship drama and part superhero movie, X-Men: First Class combines all these elements and cooks them to perfection. The film is a beautiful soufflé of inspirations and ideas, not necessarily perfect, but wholly satisfying. Anchored by a great cast, solid direction and a tremendous eye for period detail and the requisite visual effects eye candy, it might be safe to say that X-Men delivers the first, great blockbuster of the summer season with very few reservations.

This film starts out very similarly to Bryan Singer’s initial X-film in 2000. A young Erik Lehnsherr is separated from his family as they enter a Nazi Concentration Camp in Poland, during which young Erik first demonstrates his gift to manipulate metal. He’s brought to a doctor named Schmidt who tries to test the boy by threatening to kill his mother, and when Erik is unable to move a coin, Schmidt shoots Mrs. Lehnsherr, unleashing Erik’s wrath. Good, says Schmidt, your hate has made you powerful… Oh wait, wrong movie.

By contrast, young Charles Xavier has had an easy life. He awakes one night to a noise in his kitchen. He comes downstairs expecting to find a burglar, but instead finds his mother rummaging in the pantry. Wait a minute, says Charles, my mom’s never been inside our kitchen in her life… Presto-chango, his mother morphs into an adorable little blue-skinned Mystique. The two become fast friends as Charles promises that the runaway Mystique need never to go hungry again. But again, that’s the wrong movie.

From there, the film follows Xavier through his schooling at Oxford and Erik through his globe-trotting revenge tour to eliminate the Nazis made his life a living hell. The two catch up while independently pursuing the same man, Schmidt, who’s really Sebastian Shaw, a mutant with global domination on his bucket list. Erik wants the man that shot his mother in cold blood, Charles is helping the CIA stop an imminent threat to world peace. The two men form a bond despite their different goals, for they both agree on one thing, mutants are the future.

One of the reasons that the initial trilogy of X-Men films worked so well, was because of the casting of classically trained actors to play Xavier and Magneto, Patrick Stewart as and Ian McKellen respectively. They brought such gravitas and realism to the parts that it was going to hard to find young actors who could not only match them, but make it believable that these are their younger versions.

But James McAvoy brings surprising charm to Xavier, who in First Class is still has that optimism and humanist spirit known to be Xavier, while letting Professor X have a scene or two where he tries to pick up women with a biology lesson. As his opposite, Michael Fassbender brings a nice tone of menace to Magneto, but also a weird kind of hopefulness as he finds his purpose as mutantkind’s saviour. If any actor will benefit the most from First Class it will be Fassbender. Like Hugh Jackman in the first X-Men, this movie could launch Fassbender to the A-list.

The supporting cast is top notch. Kevin Bacon as Shaw is especially a standout, chewing the scenery with relish and striding across the screen with the swagger of an old-fashioned Bond villain. Bacon may have always been a solid actor and pop culture curio, but there’s something magnetic about how he plays Shaw. There’s a different kind of magnetism when it comes to Shaw’s girl Friday, Emma Frost, as personified by January Jones, and if you’ve seen the pictures then you know why. Frost seems to get lost in the shuffle in the film’s last act, but Jones brings a fine touch of coolness and clinical detachment – along with her physical attributes – to the role.

Oddly enough, the weakest bits of the story in X-Men: First Class have to do with the first class of X-Men. Jennifer Lawrence brings some new dimension to Mystigue by making her more than the “naked blue chick,” and Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast plays well the mutant struggle to be normal and the dual effort to accept and be accepted, and trying to change without changing. The rest of the first class get a moment or two to shine, but both the first battle with these X-Men and the scene of their training is kind of truncated to an uncomfortable level, but if that’s all it takes to keep the story moving, I don’t have that big a problem with it.

But there is far more to love in X-Men: First Class then there is to complain about. It’s an inventive way to jumpstart a stolid franchise, and it leaves the doors open to pursue further adventures from the X-Men’s past. An excellent summer blockbuster with brains, heart and courage. A triple threat.

Battle: Los Angeles

Rating: ***

The alien invasion genre has been enjoying a resurgence lately. There was last fall’s SKYLINE, this coming summer’s COWBOYS & ALIENS, and the highly-anticipated TV drama FALLING SKIES. But for now we have BATTLE: LOS ANGELES, a film that could euphemistically be called BLACK HAWK DOWN with flying saucers. Actually, it’s a fairly apt description, though a tad ambitious given everything. Still, for a satisfying, gritty, urban warfare epic, BATTLE: LOS ANGELES is actually very satisfying.

The set-up is simple: aliens arrive off the coastal areas all around the planet and their intentions are immediately identified as hostile. Wave after wave of Marines are being sent in to combat the aliens’ ground assault (fortunately, for some strange reason, they have no air support…yet). One squad of Marines, led by a green lieutenant, are dispatched to help recover civilians from the war zone before the Air Force begins their bombardment. Naturally, complications occur, and the squad is left to the command of Sergeant Michael Nantz (Aaron Eckhart), who’s close to retirement and haunted by some nondescript war drama.

The film is solid in setting up the battle, and doesn’t try and bog the thing down with some unnecessary melodrama, or over-complicating the aliens and their reasons for descending on planet Earth. SKYLINE failed epically because the motivations of the aliens are unclear, and their motivations weird and terrifying. Combined with the fact that all the human characters in that movie, including TV’s Eric Balfour(!), were beneath contempt and what was left was a movie neither compelling or particularly engaging.

The urban warfare perspective serves BATTLE: LA better as opposed to the SKYLINE’s whiny condo dwellers approach. The action is well-directed if not inspired, but director Jonathan Liebesman wisely shirks the idea of going full handheld with the action, but still manages to level a touch of realism to how the film is made. In other words, this isn’t pseudo-war documentary, or rather what some people think the way a war documentary should look. The action is fairly solid, and, admittedly, it’s gratifying to see an alien invasion movie that doesn’t try for one minute to be STAR WARS redux. (INDEPENDENCE DAY, I’m looking at you.)

But let’s rewind for a moment, and revisit the alien’s motivation. Apparently, they’ve come to our world looking for water, which seems to be how they power their ships, and hey, they just love the stuff, I guess. (I wonder if they’ve ever warred against the aliens from SIGNS?) Set aside the fact that water is one of the most common compounds in the universe (we seem to find it everywhere, even in our own solar system), and its base components – hydrogen and oxygen – are two of the most basic elements in the universe, the aliens still had to come to Earth to find water?

Setting aside that they can travel hundreds of light years across the universe but can’t smash some hydrogen and oxygen together to get water, why do invading aliens even need motivation? It’s been a while since I’ve read WAR OF THE WORLDS, but I don’t remember the passage where the unnamed protagonist gets the expository behind the invasion. Maybe aliens can be dicks. Maybe they don’t like our faces. To me, no motivation, articulated or supposed, is better than a stupid one like they hate us for our water.

But back to the movie, which as I said, is perfectly serviceable and actually rather enjoyable. You are kind of sad to see the soldiers dispatched when their time comes, and Eckhart is truly effective as the sergeant that keeps the unit together despite everything. BATTLE: LA is lo-fi, effective popcorn action with a little bit of sprinkled melodrama for seasoning. It’s a satisfying effort all around, even if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in the process. Or is that saucer?

The Adjustment Bureau

Rating: ****

Philip K. Dick has provided the basis for some of the most exciting and imaginative science fiction films in the history of cinema: Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Minority Report. Of course, the work of Dick also inspired Next, Paycheck and Impostor, but the author can hardly be blamed for the cinematic missteps made more than 20 years after he died.

But Dick is done right by The Adjustment Bureau, a philosophical treatise about fate versus chance, disguised as a romantic drama with a conspiratorial bent. It’s also a new entry in the subgenre of Matt Damon running movies. Damon plays a U.S. congressman with high political ambitions that realizes there’s more to the world he knows than he ever knew, and the aftermath of that seems to be a lot of running. He runs enough for all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. But then again, if you were chasing the girl of your dreams and she looked like Emily Blunt, you’d probably do a lot of running too.

Damon’s Congressman, David Norris, has a bright political future, and is set to be the youngest member of the U.S. Senate ever, only to be T-boned in the eleventh hour by a scandal involving a gag with his old fraternity brothers. On Election Night, on the brink of his first real loss, David rehearses his concession speech alone in the men’s room, when meets an utterly enchanting woman named Elise (played by Blunt). Elise is hiding from security after having crashed a wedding, and through this chance meeting, David is able to give an impromptu speech that turns his loss around and sets him up for a victory next time.

What David doesn’t know is that despite the love-at-first-site connection between him and Elise, he wasn’t supposed to see her ever again. This is where The Adjustment Bureau comes in. A group of near-omniscient figures that nudge people to where they need to be in order to meet their destiny, Bureau Case Agent Harry Mitchell (Anthony Mackie) is supposed to wait for David to pass by a bus bench one morning and have him “accidentally” spill his coffee. But Harry falls asleep and misses David, and instead David makes his bus and just happens to run into Elise again. Is it fate? Is it written in the stars? Or is The Bureau just getting really sloppy?

David finds out pretty early on about the Bureau and its agents. Richardson (John Slattery) lays it out for him when David arrives at the office early and catches a Bureau adjustment in process. Basically, Richardson tells David, you have bigger fish to fry than romancing some random girl you’re smitten with. And sorry dude, we really meant that to be a one time thing and if you don’t do what we say, we erase your memory like the Men in Black.

I did enjoy the almost laid back quality of the Bureau. They’re not some perfect force of universal bureaucrats, but capable of fallibility and making mistakes. Apparently, David’s not the first guy to find out about the adjusting business, and he probably won’t be the last. Reluctantly, he accepts that he can’t see Elise again. Of course, Richardson burning the slip of paper with her phone number on it made that a bit easier.

The film’s pace moves rather briskly. We flash-forward a few years later to the brink of another senate run by David, and through no fault of his own, he one day looks out the bus window and sees none other than Elise walking down the street. Loophole, boys. He didn’t seek her out, this is completely random and David knows it’s random because the Bureau guys told him seeing Elise was a no-no. Where does fate end and chance begin? The Bureau and Richardson still insist that a life with Elise is not in David’s plan, but why does he keep running into her?

It’s a rare quality that the philosophical divide can create genuine suspense and an edge-of-your-seat quality, but screenwriter and director George Nolfi manages to do just that. You both root for David and Elise to find love with each other, but you fear those consequences that the Bureau agents speak of. There’s a “Come on, just let those crazy kids be” cheering appeal, but you’ve got to wonder why they’d chase a guy all over Manhattan to keep him from the ballet dancer he’s crushing on. But to the viewer though, love wins you over in the end.

That decision is helped with the wicked chemistry between Damon and Blunt, which makes you believe in love at first sight. Blunt comes across as free-spirited but not too flighty, while Damon manages to bring out convincingly the romantic inside the buttoned down politician. I give kudos to Slattery and Mackie for giving their characters some human grace rather than playing things too cold and distant, I just wish someone could have told Terence Stamp as Adjuster boss Thompson that he didn’t have to play it like General Zod.

But the focus in The Adjustment Bureau isn’t on grandiose sci-fi set pieces or scenery chewing overacting, it’s on simple storytelling and character work. It’s charming and witty in its way, and you may scoff at the silliness of the Bureau agents getting their powers through their awesome fedoras, but in keep with the tone of the movie, it makes perfect sense and not contrived at all. It’s a winning movie that does Philip Dick proud, and handily proves that you don’t need a lot of flash or cash to make a compelling sci-fi movie. I don’t know if it’s your destiny to see it, but it should be.

TRON: Legacy

Rating: **1/2

The hype was outstanding, which is interesting because when the original TRON came out in 1982 it was, to borrow the phrase, an unmitigated disaster. Still, to a lot of children of the 80s there is something to recommend it with a retro-futuristic charm from back in the day when Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 were the cutting edge of home computing. It’s as quaint as it is antiquated in the cyber-age, and the legend has been fuelled through the years by a small and growing chorus of fans. Disney heard the siren song of endless, sweaty wads of geek money and knew that the long gestating sequel was to be moved to the top of their to-do pile. But honestly, what was the point?

The original TRON, much like last year’s AVATAR, was a creature of style before substance. It was a GULLIVER’S TRAVELS tale of a stranger in a strange land whose triteness was obscured by the cutting edge filmmaking that was being employed to tell the story. I wish that TRON LEGACY had the same problem. The story is a whirlwind of philosophical technobabble and special effects porn tied together by the loosest tendrils of a story. When your film’s called TRON and the actual character the film is named after comes across as a mere after thought, there’s cause for concern.

But that’s just part of the problem. For some reason Kevin Flynn, the computer visionary played by Jeff Bridges in both the original TRON and its sequel has morphed from a young Bill Gates to an older Dude. As in THE BIG LEBOWSKI’s Dude. There’s actually a scene where Flynn tells his anxious son Sam (played with perfect woodenness by Garrett Hedlund) that he’s messing with his zen thing. Well sorry there Flynn, but the son who hasn’t seen you in 20 years has a lot to deal with, including being sucked into the computer-based wonderland of The Grid.

The backstory is basically that Kevin Flynn disappeared two decades ago, leaving behind his son Sam orphaned and ambiguous as to whether or not he wants to continue his father’s legacy at Microsof… I mean, Encom. Content to live like a digital anarchist, Sam does what he can to skewer Encom’s capitalist agenda. He’s still visited by his father’s friend Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner, also of TRON part 1) who this night comes with interesting news: he’s received a page – like, on a pager – from Kevin Flynn’s old arcade, where the porthole to TRON land resides.

Once inside, Sam does the usual TRON stuff like racing on light cycles and throwing flying discs in gladiatoresque struggles. It’s part of the machinations of KLU (a younger-by-way-of-CG Bridges) to escape The Grid and take over the real world because the porthole can only be opened from the outside. Flynn, for his part, has been trying to protect the last of the “isomorphic algorithms,” a group of programs that evolved naturally in the environment of The Grid. Quorra (Olivia Wilde) is the last of these programs after KLU’s genocidal spree.

One of the key problems is that the story is almost needlessly convoluted. What could have been a solid father-son story is loaded with a lot of misspent and unrealized mythology, and that’s a complete turn-off. “Isomorphic algorithms” don’t exactly have the same simplicity as, say, The One Ring, or a mystical alien rain forest, and getting talked down to with the cyber speak by The Dude is somewhat less than appealing. The plot holes were galling, and odd little Easter Eggs are inserted with no subtlety at all. For example, Cillian Murphy appears as “Edward Dillinger II,” a character named after the antagonist played by David Warner in the original film. He appears in one scene, and such heavy emphasis is placed on naming this character with three lines, they might as well have put in one of those You Tube footnotes saying, “See more about Edward in TRON 3.”

The acting is also demure. Bridges looks like he’s thinking about all the better roles he’s done lately and how he’s back here in TRON land in spite of all good sense. “Younger” Bridges doesn’t fair much better as the film seems to teeter between believability and outright goofiness so far as the effects work is concerned. Hedlund almost seems like a computer himself, as Sam is remarkably emotionless in spite of a story that should have had him on a roller coaster of emotion. Wilde manages to defy the odds by being engaging and energetic as Quorra. She’s easily the best part of the film. Michael Sheen also shines in a brief bit as a Ziggy Stardust looking nightclub(?) manager.

But despite the fact that this was a fan driven enterprise, I can’t possibly see why a fan of original TRON could find this film approachable. There’s not a lot of fun here, and because the effects are state-of-the-art, photo realistic 3-D, even the kitsch value of the production design is lost. The movie is pristine to look at, and the music by Daft Punk is amazing, but at most, TRON LEGACY is an awesome, two hour Daft Punk music video. Sadly, TRON LEGACY is another example of a movie not living up to its own hype.