Movie Review Round-Up - A Furiously Tangled Trek Into the Oblivion of Iron Man 3

It's summer time which means it's also movie time, and for that reason it's one of my favorite times of year. I could do without the heat and humidity seeing as how it tends to turn me from being a big, hairy beast into a big, hairy sweaty beast with questionable hygiene. It's 138 degrees outside this time of year and there are bugs whereas in any given theater it's 70 degrees and there are nachos readily available. Sure, there are annoying little kids and their unqualified and ineffective parents to deal with (sadly I've had experiences in theaters that have left me questioning how some adults have lived as long as they have and wanting to punch a child), but is it any wonder why I'd sooner stay inside and watch movies?

Star Trek Into Darkness

Picking up where JJ Abrams' reboot of the classic Star Trek mythology left off, Into Darkness sees Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto), and their cohorts plunged into battle with a foe that is both mysterious and familiar. Through perceived acts of terror, this villain reveals that Star Fleet has realized a threat exists in the form of the Klingons and that scientific exploration is no longer the sole purpose of their operations.

Pine and Quinto are the obvious headliners of this movie but for my money Benedict Cumberbatch is the true star. His portrayal of Khan is absolutely brilliant - he has an amazing voice, which is a lot like that of Jeremy Irons only somehow more visceral in its delivery. Like all great villains, he has charisma to rival that of his protagonist counterparts. Combine that with the fact that his character's back story involves a legitimate effort at revenge and you can see why there are points in this that I was genuinely pulling for Khan instead of the crew of the Enterprise.

Longtime Trek fans will quickly realize that the plot of Into Darkness is something of a re-hashing of 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This take on Khan is more relevant to today's audiences as the concept of a character seeking vengeance on an assumed political or government entity is certainly identifiable.

One of few issues I have with the movie is the finale of Into Darkness in that it tidies up a bit too well. There was an effort to send everyone home happy here, or so it seems. That and the fact that there are still parts of the Enterprise's interior that look altogether too much like a boiler room are all that bothered me. I'm looking forward to seeing where this new Trek is headed, even though it may be a while before we see another one since Abrams' focus is now on a different universe, one far, far away from this.

/5 Tribles

Iron Man 3

The world has changed for Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) since his encounter with other-worldly beings in The Avengers. He's a man so distraught with fear over being unable to protect the one person he cares for more than life itself (Pepper Potts/Gwyneth Paltrow), he's dedicated his every waking moment to advancing his Iron Man armory by building dozens of specialized configurations. Try as he might to use what he knows to satiate his fears, they're realized when Stark encounters an international terrorist known as the Mandarin.

I don't get Stark as a haunted man who's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, even though it's a topical subject that's gotten a lot of attention now that so many members of our Armed Forces are returning home from combat with symptoms of PTSD. Downey is still the only person I ever want to see play Tony Stark, I just think the well is running dry on Iron Man now that he's done his job in serving as a conduit for The Avengers to assemble. What's more, the relationships that exist between these characters doesn't feel as fluid as it has in the past.

I hate to say this - IM3 is my least favorite of the Iron Man franchise. There was a lot of fanfare about Shane Black (who's best known for having created the Lethal Weapon series) coming aboard to take the helm once Jon Favreau decided not to return as director after having lead the first two films, but I don't think Black's writing or directorial style have improved matters. If anything, he's managed to take the canon a few steps backwards. IM3 has too many moving parts that aren't that interesting. This is particularly disappointing because there's a decent chance this is the last dedicated Iron Man film starring Downey, Jr.

/5 Shellheads

Tangled


Tangled is Disney's interpretation of the Grimm fairy tale Rapunzel, and like many of the Disney translations this story has been modified to make it more consumable for younger audiences. By that I mean it has a happier ending where evil has been vanquished and good prevails, as opposed to almost everyone involved dying a horribly tragic death. But what else should we expect? This is Disney, after all.

Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) is in her late teens here and, like most girls her age, she's beginning to feel the urge to strike out on her own. In Rapunzel's case, her need is more legitimate than most seeing as how she's been held captive under the pretense that the outside world is a terribly dangerous place by the woman she thinks is her mother, Gothel (Donna Murphy), in a tower where the only other being she has contact with is her pet chameleon Pascal. Her desire to flee is enabled when a bungling burglar (Flynn Rider/Zachary Levi) finds his way into the tower. He inadvertently sets off a series of events that not only gets Rapunzel out of the tower but reveals her true identity as well.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that Disney and Pixar are the same entity but in watching Tangled I can tell you that a number of differences can be spotted. The style of animation, most notably, but what stands out the most is the writing. I'm of the opinion that Pixar's films are some of the best written movies, animated or otherwise, you'll ever see. I'm not saying that material like Tangled isn't penned well but the fact that this is an adaptation versus a novel concept does hurt it somewhat as there's already a "tower" in place from the start which confines where these characters can go.

There's not an overwhelming sense of star power here, and I appreciate that. It seems like a lot of A-list Hollywood talent do an animated feature for the heck of it. Here, you have a main character voiced by Mandy Moore, a singer and actress who's more than capable of handling the musical elements while also breathing life into Rapunzel. Zachary Levi does a great job with Rider as he's not only the comedic center of the film but also a character with a number of dramatic scenes as well. Donna Murphy is yet another evil pseudo-mother in the annals of Disney mythology; she doesn't have that much to hang her hat on as the character isn't as involved as some of their other villainous matriarchs have been.

This may seem odd but my two favorite characters from Tangled are ones that have no actual lines: Pascal the chameleon and Maximus the horse. Seriously, they're fantastic - I'd probably watch an "Adventures of Pascal & Maximus" if it ever happened.

 /5 Frying Pans

Fast & Furious 6


I have to apologize to anyone who's a fan of this series because I don't particularly see the need to spend a whole lot of time reviewing this movie. When you are talking about a franchise that's on it's sixth iteration, it stands to reason that the movies have become paint-by-number in terms of their assembly and that's exactly the case here. There are criminals, there are cops, there are fast cars, and a whole heaping helping of absurdity to tie it together.

Vin Diesel and essentially all the other original members of the Fast & Furious cast have returned. Their characters have more or less sunk into lives of hiding in order to stave off heat from various international crime fighting organizations, but as it turns out it's those same groups that were hunting them that now need their help. There's a new bad guy in town, one with a similar penchant for being fast and furious about it, and there's apparently no better team to throw at this new threat than an aging group of street racers.

I'm one to talk when it comes to criticizing movies and TV shows where an ability to suspend what's plausible in this realm of existence is necessary, seeing as how that's more or less everything that I watch. Be that as it may, Fast & Furious 6 has a number of scenes where you have to take everything you've ever learned about physics and the durability of the human body and throw it out the window. More than that, you have to take it and light it on fire with kerosene - it's that crazy, and it's that distracting. For example, if Fast & Furious 6 is to be believed, there exists a runway somewhere in Europe that is approximately 300 miles long.

Don't worry, they're already working on Fast & Furious 7 which will add Jason Statham to the cast.

/5 Vin Diesels

Oblivion

In the not so distant future, humanity has fled planet Earth as a result of the rock we once called home having been ravaged by an alien race (who went so far as to blow up the moon, just for good measure) that sought to annihilate our species and strip-mine the globe of any useful resources. We were somehow able to overcome the odds and defeat the invaders but we did so at the cost of losing what once was our home world as Earth is too far gone to remain habitable. Now only a few humans remain on Earth, support crews in place to oversee a mining operation to provide fuel for the colonizing effort on one of Saturn's moons (where the survivors of our kind are holed up) and protect it from attacks by alien survivors, now known as Scavs (short for "scavengers").

Tom Cruise leads the cast of Oblivion as he plays Jack, a character who is a mechanic but also a soldier, tasked with maintaining a batch of automated mining platforms and a squadron of airborne drones that protect them from Scav attacks. Imagine Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible series but with more knowledge of engines than international espionage. He's flanked by Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), whose role in the operation is similar to that of technical advisor and overwatch, meaning she's Jack's eyes and ears when he's out in the wasteland.

Visually speaking, Oblivion shares much with director Joseph Kosinski's only other film, that being TRON: Legacy. That's not a complaint as I loved Legacy and I can't wait to see what Kosinski does with the announced sequel to that film.

I don't feel like I can justifiably get into discussing the remainder of the cast because, to put it quite simply, there's a whole lot of ways I could spoil the plot and I don't have enough cleverness within me to skirt the material without blatantly stating what happens. That said, I will tell you that while there are a number of twists to this story the sum of the entire thing is very derivative. There are elements of films like Moon, Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Independence Day, and a sprinkling of classic Twilight Zone episodes. It's not a bad mix of inspiration as sci-fi goes these days but the more the movie goes on the more imitative it seems to become.

/5 evil super computers