Up

Ever since they released Cars, Pixar has been going down a more and more unmarketable road. A rat who cooks and a post-apocalyptic robot are not easy sells to children. Even harder to market, one would assume, is an elderly widower. If I had been given a window to the future a few months ago and had seen that Up, Pixar's tenth feature, had become their lowest grosser yet, it would not have surprised me. Having now seen the film, I can't imagine it not being one of their bigger hits. Filled with adventure, humor, bright colors and likable characters, this is one of the most accessible Pixar films to date.

That said, you take the good with the bad. For all the fun to be had, it feels like a slight creative step backwards from both WALL-E and Ratatouille. The story and the thematic arcs are just as good as those films, but it seems to have a heavier emphasis on the action than those two did. Up comes very close to finding that balance between entertainment set pieces and character development, but the scales ultimately tip towards the former. Which is fine if that's what you're looking for, as there are some breathless moments to be had (especially in 3D).

The film opens on a sequence that ranks right up there with the best things Pixar has ever done. We follow Carl Fredricksen from childhood - where he meets the love of his life Ellie - through to her death. In ten minutes we get their entire life story, the struggles and hardships, the laughs and joys. It's a daring way to give us insight to who Carl is, but it really works. From there Carl decides to take that trip he and Ellie always dreamed of: to Paradise Falls in South America. So Carl ties thousands of balloons to his house and sets sail. Only catch is Russell, a local child, is on his front porch. The two set out on a quest to find Paradise Falls, but the story takes some surprising and silly turns from there.

When the film wants to be serious, it is. Carl is a complex and fascinating character, and even Russell has some great development. But the film has a strong sense of humor, found largely though the animals the characters encounter along the way. A pack of talking dogs are responsible for a lot of goofy moments (the talking is dealt with in a way that makes sense in the world these characters exist in), including a scene in which dog fighting takes on a literal meaning. And as the film progresses we get bigger and bigger set pieces, culminating in one very vertigo inducing fight scene that had me tense throughout. But always hanging over the characters' heads is that house of Carl's, there to remind him and us of why he came there in the first place. While the film can be silly, I liked that no one spelled out what the film is about. That's a bad habit a lot of family films have, even WALL-E, so that touch of subtlety was greatly appreciated.

Visually this is another Pixar stunner. Director Pete Docter uses color and depth of field to convey how confined Carl's life has become, and how much it flourishes when he leaves home. There are moments where we simply see the house floating along that are breathtaking. And the character design has become so good, I forgot these were animated characters. Pixar has wisely realized that animated humans are more sympathetic if they aren't too realistic looking, as they avoid any uncanny valley issues by stylizing their human characters. At the same time, the aforementioned dogs are almost lifelike and very adorable. Up embraces a slightly more cartoony visual vibe, and it really suits the story.

I certainly enjoyed Up quite a lot, and I really can't blame Pixar for trying to reel themselves back in a bit after two challenging pictures. They've certainly earned the right to let loose and have a little fun. When this film wants to challenge you, it does, and when it wants to have fun, it does that too. My tastes tend a bit more towards the quieter moments, but kids will definitely love the fun moments a lot. It's certainly the most widely appealing film they've made since The Incredibles, and I can't imagine anyone not having a good time with Up.

Terminator Salvation

With the decade coming to a close, I've been doing a lot of thinking about how cinema has grown and changed over the previous ten years, and all the amazing new talents that have emerged in that time. To think, prior to this decade people like Christopher Nolan, Darren Aronofsky, and Paul Greengrass had yet to really enter the fray. Meanwhile people like Peter Jackson, Alfonso Cuaron, and Guillermo del Toro finally emerged from the shadows to create major visions. We've had a lot of amazing new talent this decade, but the good must always go with the bad. If the previously mentioned were among the most important new talents of the decade, then who were the worst? Well, I think you can already see where I am going with this since this is my Terminator Salvation review. Director McG started his film making career at the start of the decade with Charlie's Angels, a bad film with little redeeming it aside from Bill Murray. It was followed by the somehow worse sequel (sans Murray), and more recently he made a film I did not see, We Are Marshall. Now maybe that film is a winner, but between his first two films and this new Terminator movie, he has demonstrated that his talent is exceedingly limited, and what's more, he probably drove the final nail into the coffin for this venerable franchise.

I'm a pretty big fan of the Terminator movies, and I enjoy all three for different reasons. The first one is a fun B-movie treated with the utmost respect by its director. T2 is the epitome of how to make a sequel, something James Cameron seems to excel at better than any of his peers. Even the third one, often unfairly maligned, has some good moments. I particularly respected its decision to not allow the franchise to become repetitive by ending it with the often mentioned Judgement Day. It has been six years since the last film (actually the shortest gap between sequels, amazingly) and the franchise has finally moved forward into the future war that has long been discussed. It seems like a pretty hard concept to mess up, but somehow McG and company do an admirable job of getting everything wrong.

We know that Skynet has become self aware and killed most of humanity. We know that John Connor has been told since childhood that he would be the key to humanity's salvation when he grew up. We know that Kyle Reese must be sent back in time to save Connor's mom from the wrath of a terminator. Beyond that, this future has been largely unwritten. The filmmakers could have done practically anything here, free from the confines of the previous films which were about characters fulfilling destiny. So it's pretty insulting that this film fails to move the story forward at all. Even remotely. This movie could have been skipped entirely, we could have moved right along to film 5, and the whole plot here could have been explained in passing by a character in just a sentence or two. Except, the events here are so inconsequential here that no one would feel the need to speak that sentence to sum up these events. Basically Connor finds out that Skynet wants to kill Kyle Reese before he goes back in time to save Sarah Connor. Connor rescues Reese and blows up a Skynet base. No forward movement of plot, no character development - that's it.

What made all the other movies so great was that they were about something. Underneath the great action set pieces was actually humor and thought. Could a person change their fate if they knew the future? What was the difference between man and machine? Could a machine be taught to be more human? Questions like those were at the heart of the original trilogy. We think maybe this film will try to explore something similar when we are introduced to Marcus (Sam Wothington), a man who donates his body to science while he is on death row. Fifteen years later we learn he is part machine, part human. Surely interesting things will come of this, right? Nope. Marcus thinks he's human, finds out he's a machine, and soundly rejects his machine side. What was especially odd about this was Connor's reaction to Marcus. Connor twice met sentient machines prior to Judgement Day, and both times he tried to show those machines how to be more human - he didn't want to believe they were totally devoid of any humanity. Here, when he meets Marcus, he immediately wants to kill him without any second thought. Yet unlike those previous machines, Marcus wants to be human, already has semblances of human emotions. One of the most human of emotions is compassion, yet Connor has been robbed of his for some reason in this film, perhaps only because it serves the story.

The acting is across the board bad, with maybe the exception of Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese. Christian Bale is always gruff as Connor, radiating a deadness inside himself that makes you not care if he lives or dies. What happened to that rebellious kid from T2 that we all loved? Sam Worthington is being proclaimed as the next big star. His next film will be Avatar, James Cameron's long awaited new film. It seems likely that McG saw that Cameron had faith in this new talent, so he grabbed him as well. I'm hoping that it is McG's fault that Worthington is so wooden, because if not, he really has about as much of a future as Hayden Christensen did post Star Wars. And I have a gripe about the women in this film. James Cameron has always been particularly great at developing strong, dynamic women in his films. McG seems to laugh at the notion that women can be strong characters. By my count there were four women in this film. One is a mute child who is an obvious nod to Newt from Aliens. She does nothing and is completely useless. Jane Alexander plays the leader of an outpost hidden in the desert. She is snatched by robots almost instantly. Bryce Dallas Howard is Connor's wife. The only words to come from her mouth are exposition. Finally, Moon Bloodgood is supposed to be our badass heroine here. She isn't. We first meet her stuck in a tree, and she needs help getting down from Marcus. Later she is attacked by a group of marauders, and again needs help defending herself. Then she leads a robot right into camp, unknowingly playing the Judas to Connor's Jesus. Why can't McG make these women strong, interesting, or realistic?

If nothing else, this film has great sound and special effects. I appreciated that they tried to incorporate practical effects whenever possible. And while the cinematography is flat and the art direction is bland, there were one or two action scenes that McG handled well. The problem was they held no weight behind them because the characters were so poorly conceived. If I don't care whether anyone lives or dies, I'm not going to be invested in scenes of peril (not to mention the bigger problem of not caring if humanity wins this war). They also found an interesting way to incorporate Arnold Schwarzenegger in the picture, and it seems likely that special effects have gotten to the point where he could appear in any Terminator film from here to the end of time and no one would really question it.

If you like loud dumb action films, this might be passable to you. If you want an actual Terminator film out of it, it's really bad, so temper you expectations and you will not be as disappointed as I was. I'd say that objectively, Wolverine was a worse movie, but this was a bigger disappointment because I expected more from it. Riddled with plot holes (how does Skynet know about its many attempts to kill John and Sarah Connor if they aren't going to attempt them for ten more years?), filled with wooden acting, and conceived as a place holder more than an advancement of a story, there's just so little here to enjoy. If there ever is another film in the series, I can only hope Cameron or someone of his ilk comes along and finishes this story in the right way.

Star Trek

I am not what you would call a dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie. Growing up I watched a decent amount of The Next Generation, and I've seen all the movies, liked maybe half of them. That said, I genuinely felt that Star Trek as a franchise had a great deal of potential, so I've always routed for it. After two dismal movies and a failed TV show, it certainly seemed like the franchise was done. So it was a bit of a surprise to see J.J. Abrams come along so soon and try and reboot from square one. In principal I was behind him, but as details emerged I was quick to make judgements. What Abrams was creating did not look like it was embracing the potential I thought this series had. Between the young cast, the overly slick visuals, and the reliance on nonstop action in the trailers, it resembled Starship Troopers minus the satire more than it did Star Trek. This was Star Trek aimed at teens with short attention spans, not fans of great story telling and nuanced characters! At some point last year I wrote off Abram's Star Trek. I knew it would bomb, be openly mocked by critics and fans, and be the final nail in the coffin for this franchise on its deathbed. Today I stand before you humbled: I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

This isn't to say that the things I feared were completely unfounded (there is maybe one action beat too many, and the visuals can be distractingly flashy in spots). But the amount this film gets right is enough to put a smile on any movie lover's face for two hours. What's great for fans is that this film does not disregard the past 40 years of history. Instead, through the franchise's favorite gimmick - time travel - we get characters of old going back to meet their young selves, and setting them on a new, alternate path. This idea works, but it would only be worth it if we can still recognise and enjoy these characters as we always have. This is where my biggest fear came in, as the casting was what made me so apprehensive.

Chris Pine, basically unknown until now, is Kirk. Smart move from the start giving it to a newcomer, as any familiar face would make it hard to buy this guy as someone audiences have known for decades. But Pine was faced with a great challenge: he had to play a character that was both iconic, and known to be played a bit... hammy. We all know Shatner has a very distinctive acting style that might not gel with a modern reboot, so how would Pine handle it? Well, he smartly embraced the attitude of Kirk while jettisoning everything else. He doesn't look or sound like Kirk, but he acts like him, and that makes all the difference. Pine doesn't hesitate from moment one. His charm, charisma, and slight edge of danger is on full display, and he feels like a genuine star. I suspect he will breath a lot of life into this franchise with his confidence in the role.

The rest of the cast embrace their roles, and each have at least one moment to shine. Zachary Quinto looks like he was born to play Spock, the resemblance is uncanny. He infuses Spock with a level of emotion not really known to the character before, but it is set up in such a way that it makes sense. Karl Urban was the real revelation to me. His casting made no sense at the time, but he is Dr. McCoy. With everyone else you would inevitably get moments of "That isn't really character X." We hear McCoy before we see him and I was already taken back to the classic films. Perhaps my favorite performance. On the other hand, Anton Yelchin and John Cho don't have a lot to do, but they don't foul it up (although they rely a bit too much on Chekov's accent being silly. Yes, he says Wulcan instead of Vulcan, we get it). Zoe Saldana as Uhura, gets the biggest upgrade from the original. It really feels like she will have a lot to do in this iteration, which is great. And finally, Simon Pegg as Scotty. Not introduced until near the end, he is a fun presence, to be sure, and it will be interesting to see him grow into the role.

Star Trek has a wonderful balance between character moments and epic scale. This film feels bigger than any other in the franchise by far. At the same time, we get great comedic moments and character defining scenes. When a planet is destroyed, it isn't just used as a way to amp up the suspense, but also as a way to develop a character who is affected by the incident. It is a balance that Abrams is able to hold onto for the whole film. While it would have been nice to have a bit more of the philosophy and big ideas that the franchise was known for in the past, it has just enough of that to get by, with the potential for more in the future. Once a doubter, now a believer, I cannot wait to see where Abrams takes his crew next.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

No franchise can sustain itself for more than a few movies without reinventing itself (James Bond, Star Wars). There is a reason for this: it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain that which made something fresh and exciting over multiple films. I can think of no 4th entry in a franchise that was just as good as the originals. So it is little surprise that X-Men Origins: Wolverine does not live up to the potential of the X-Men franchise. No, the surprise comes from just how slogged down and dull this excursion is. How do you take the most interesting character in your franchise and make him boring and even pathetic?

The first and most obvious problem is that this is an origin story for a character whose origin isn't very interesting. Yes, his past was a mystery in the other films, but that is what made him fascinating. His journey to discover who he was one of the delights of the original trilogy. What makes Jason Bourne work so wonderfully is that we don't ever get a whole movie dedicated to him before he lost his memory. Instead we are given bits and pieces of his past at the same time Bourne is. By focusing a whole film on Wolverine's past, it removes any allure of mystery the character has. It also shows us that we pretty much already knew what happened to him prior to the first X-Men, so why even bother?

What I suspect was the original plan here was to introduce us to Team X, the covert team of mutants working for the government that Wolverine was a part of. This was going to be a jumping off point for a number of other characters we could follow. And to the film's credit, they got a number of classic characters and some pretty good actors to play them. The film then squanders this by not devoting any time to the team, as well as (SPOILERS) killing them all off (/SPOILERS). Wonderful character actors like Dominic Monaghan and Kevin Durand are given great characters and then wasted completely. Ryan Reynolds, who blew me away last month in Adventureland is set up to be a major part of the movie, only to immediately disappear. When he does resurface, he is robbed of his best quality. And the always wonderful Liev Schreiber is given the role of Sabertooth, who is apparently Wolverine's brother, but he never gets to anything other than yell and kill. There seems to be so much going on underneath the skin of the character, but Schreiber is never allowed to explore it. A movie about the relationship between these brothers would have been so much more interesting, but Fox wrongly thought audiences only want explosions and yelling, not character development.

The biggest sin of a major summer blockbuster like this is to be boring, but that's exactly what this film is. The action is pedestrian at best, lazy at worst. And dear lord the CGI is absolutely awful. Where did they spend all their money if they can't even make Wolverine's claws look real? Watch for a scene in the bathroom of a farmhouse and you will see some of the worst special effects in a major movie in many a years. I suspect the lazy action comes from a tension between director Gavin Hood and the studio. Hood is best known for the Oscar winning character drama Tsotsi, so it would make sense that he would want to focus more on the characters and less on the action. The studio must have pushed him to amp up the action, but they hired a guy who is not familiar with the basics of filming action sequences. The result is a film that is neither exciting nor especially deep in characters, as it couldn't choose between the two or fuse them into one cohesive product.

There just isn't much to really say about such a minor film like this. It's clear no one involved was very passionate about their work (except maybe Schreiber, who probably saw an opportunity to make an interesting character before it was neutered), and that lack of passion wears off on the audience. Will X-Men Origins: Wolverine kill this franchise? I think it just might. Not quite up to Batman and Robin levels of awful, it still clearly has nothing but contempt for the fans and the franchise. You can do a lot better than this film, and by summer's end I suspect this will be a minor forgotten note buried under bigger and better films.