Review: Super 8

Abrams and Spielberg team up to bring an adventure about scary monsters and precocious tweens. You can guess who brought what.

For those too young to remember, before comic book movies and other geek culture dominated summer release schedules a blockbuster’s pedigree was based largely on its stars and sometimes also the director and producers involved. For about fifteen years or so, roughly between 1982′s E.T. and 1997′s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Steven Spielberg’s name on a project was pretty much a license to print cash. Long on adventure and what a less jaded era called “wonder” but also cynically sentimental and patronizing towards the “magic” of youthful exuberance, Spielberg’s directorial work – E.T., the first Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade – routinely provided an idealized vision of childhood for the latchkey generation.

So it’s probably no wonder that Super 8 takes place in early summer 1979, a period that’s come to symbolize an age of low-tech innocence in much the same way that the 1950s did for the 1980′s. Spielberg as producer is well matched with J.J. Abrams, a writer/director who doesn’t mind suspending spectacle for the sake of character development. But their collaboration is less a union of strengths so much as a blending of weaknesses, making the finished film an uneven, prolonged struggle with itself. To call it a bad film is perhaps besides the point, because it never really aspires to anything besides diversionary entertainment. Except it often fails to provide that.

Set in the Springsteenesque town of Lillian, Ohio, the story focuses on tween Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and his sheriff’s deputy father (Kyle Chandler), struggling with the death of Joe’s mother at the local steel mill. The two are not close, but with the beginning of summer Joe finds a creative outlet for his grief helping overbearing buddy Charles (Riley Griffiths) complete his homemade zombie film for a local film competition. Complications arise when Charles casts local dream girl Alice (Elle Fanning) in a crucial role. Alice’s alcoholic father, it seems, is indirectly responsible for the death of Joe’s mother. Joe and Alice are fascinated by one another through guilt and grief, and their friendship – forbidden by Joe’s dad as well as Alice’s (Ron Eldard) – coalesces into the bulk of the film’s emotional substance.

Courtney and Fanning are both very good actors, and backed by old pros like Chandler and Eldard it’s almost a shame that the film won’t be an engaging character piece about these simple, sympathetic victims. Yet, despite, and nevertheless, the filming of Charles’ 8-millimeter saga captures a spectacular freight train-truck collision that frees something the Air Force was transporting across country; stranger still, the truck was driven into the train on purpose by their science teacher (Glynn Turman). In short order a series of strange events plague the town – machinery disappears, all the dogs head for the hinterlands, people start vanishing. The Air Force, led by Colonel Nelec (Noah Emmerich) obviously knows something but won’t share information with local officials. When the mysterious presence grabs the town’s sheriff, Joe’s father tries to hold things together while solving the mystery.

The strange events increase, growing more violent and more dependant on special effects. Joe and the gang realize, thanks to purloined evidence from the teacher’s storage locker, that the creature they see only dimly in the footage from their wrecked camera is the prisoner of the military, an alien crash-landed on Earth in the 1950s and held prisoner ever since. As the Air Force evacuates the town and steps up its attempts to recapture the alien, Joe embarks on a mission to save Alice from its subterranean lair.

The resolutions to both stories will feel familiar to anyone who grew up with Spielberg’s films and their legions of reruns on cable. Joe’s empathy allows him to reach an entente with the monstrous alien, saving Alice’s life even while the arrogance of the adults around them cements their downfall. The kids’ fathers reconcile their differences in short order (too short, really, given their source) and the alien gets to go home thanks to a spaceship cobbled together from all those stolen appliances.

The film’s getting a lot of press about Abrams paying “homage” to Spielberg’s 80s work, but the combined effect doesn’t feel so much like tribute as parenthetical citation. A nod to Close Encounters of the Third Kind here, an oblique reference to Jaws there, and of course a tureen full of The Goonies (of which Spielberg was Executive Producer, possibly a nebulous title except the film bears so many of his hallmarks). Yet all the little details don’t serve to move the story or the characters forward but instead hang from it like tinsel. Scenes drag on or fall short before reaching their payoff, and often hammy acting by the kids only compounds the problem.

The first act, past the lovely prologue involving the funeral of Joe’s mother, goes on much longer than it should, and falls short of establishing the children’s’ personalities before the creature is set loose. The second act, by comparison, contains most of the suspense but often feels disorganized and uncertain of its priorities. For as much as Abrams is willing to pause action to let his characters breathe – and he does in a heartbreaking sequence involving Alice and Joe watching home movies of Joe’s mother – the action when it happens fails to engage on anything but the most superficial level. He also relies on too many tropes he’s used before: the contraband film strip, the underground bunkers, the renegade scientists all recall Lost too much by half, and not in a way that invites favorable comparison.

For as good as Courtney and Fanning are, less so are Riley Griffiths and Ryan Lee as Charles the filmmaker and Cary the pyromaniac. But their characters are little more than stock types, meant to occupy space and provide comic relief, as are Gabriel Basso and Zach Mills as the gang’s third string. Emmerich is a sublime character actor who deserves better roles than Nelec, a villain who would twirl his mustache if he had one.

The ending is about what you ‘d expect, sentimental and superficially brave without excpecting any real emotional engagement from the audience. Spielberg’s films, after all, always made sure their stories ended tidily for everyone, character and viewer alike. Actually, this time the audience can stick around to see Charles’ completed zombie saga in all its goofy, patchwork glory. At several minutes in length it’s a nice after-dinner mint for the rest of the film, even if it’s maybe not as charming as Abrams and Spielberg think.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, September 2010 Edition

Our monthly (or so) roundup of news miscellany. 

There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many of them can go to blogging. Over time, newsworthy items build up and bits of information worth commenting about accumulate. Once a month or so this round-up of such bits and pieces tries to “clear the decks” before the next month in film begins. 

Sometimes carving out a whole blog post about such items is harder than it might seem. September was a slow month, and just in the last couple of days the news was pretty sad. 

1. First and most importantly: legendary film and television actor Tony Curtis passed away September 29, of heart trouble. The epitome of 1950′s Hollywood class throughout his sixty-year career, Curtis made his major screen debut in the 1949 classic film noir Criss Cross and ended it with 2008′s David & Fatima, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet” that lobbied for Arab-Israeli peace. His other classic film roles include The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Some Like It Hot (1958), The Defiant Ones (1959), and Sparticus (1960). 

It’s very possible that without him this blog might not exist. The 1990s television documentary series Hollywood Babylon was an introduction into the mystery and lore of the movies and their history, with each episode always elegantly and compassionately hosted by Mr. Curtis. Our most sincere condolences to his family and friends. Everyone else should head over to Empire Online, to read their 2001 interview in which Curtis comes boldly clean about his tumultuous career. 

This poster is ugly. Watch the show anyway.

 2. Barely two or three weeks into the new fall television season and already shows are getting cancelled. Fox’s Lone Star, despite glowing reviews, received cellar-dwelling ratings and got its walking papers after two weeks. Meanwhile NBC’s Outlaw and Undercovers aren’t doing so well, nor are ABC’s The Whole Truth and My Generation. CBS has plenty to smile about, thanks to strong premieres from its established shows amid solid debuts of Hawaii Five-0 and Blue Bloods. 

Shows inevitably get lost in the shuffle of so many premieres, and some are often victim to bad marketing (The plan for Outlaw, for example, seemed to consist simply of ads announcing “Hey look! It’s Jimmy Smits!”) FX’s Terriers, one of the better shows on cable, is also the victim of  the most head-scratchingly misbegotten - yet pervasive – promotional schemes in recent memory. A good show that’s getting better, fans of Justified and the late, lamented Life will definitely want to check it out. 

One theory, anyway: Caine

 3. The movie itself was a letdown on several levels, including not least of which the satisfaction quotient of its conclusion. For those still puzzling over what the final and last shot meant for Leonardo DiCaprio’s beleaguered dream raider Dominic Cobb, Inception co-star Michael Caine recently provided BBC Radio with his own theory regarding its opaque ending. In a nutshell, Mr. Caine thinks Cobb is reunited with his family in the real world, not just in the dream dimension. 

Talia al Ghul

 4. In less ambiguous news, Inception creator Christopher Nolan confirmed this week what everybody in the world already suspected: There will be a third Batman film. No word yet on who the bad guy(s) will be, but we’ve got plenty of ideas on villains he and screenwriter Jonathan Nolan might use. Our hope is for Talia al Ghul, the daughter of Batman Begins nemesis Ra’s al Ghul, and hopefully the mercenary Deathstroke thrown in for bad measure. 

5. Now that we’ve got our Criterion edition copy of The Thin Red Line it’s time to start heckling them to publish something else we want. Actually, they’re sort of ahead of us: Between now and the end of November the label will release expanded and restored editions of Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 breakthrough masterpiece Paths of Glory, Charles Laughton’s noir paean to German Expressionism The Night of the Hunter, and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the great auteur’s swan song for his Little Tramp persona. 

The Night of the Hunter is one of those works of genius you view and then let your brain spend hours trying to process. Consider the clip below: 

Criterion’s complete schedule of upcoming releases can be found here.

6. Is there such a thing as too many alien invasion movies? We’re tempted to say no, especially when considering Skyline, the second directorial effort from special effects team the Brothers Strause. Los Angeles serves as the alien’s beachhead this time around, with flying saucers vacuuming residents inside their cargo bays for a sinister purpose while releasing biomechanical hunters to search for escapees (flying saucers over Hollywood – Ed Wood would be proud.)

The eclectic cast includes Eric Balfour, David Zayas, Donald Faison, Scottie Thompson and Brittany Daniel. The film is currently scheduled for a November 12 release.

7. There’s something to said for putting your money where your mouth is: Waiting for “Superman”, the new documentary about the current devastation in American public schools, includes a special incentive for audiences: each ticket purchased contains a gift code that buyers can use to donate fifteen dollars to the classroom of their choice.

As controversial a film as you might imagine, the documentary by director Davis Guggenheim follows several students through the educational system, allegedly exposing its systemic failures and shortcomings. The film’s official site includes a place to pledge to attend a screening as well as information about the donation process.

Having slowly expanded into new markets all summer, the film opens nationwide October 8.

8. Finally, we want to wish a happy birthday to the Internet Movie Database, which celebrates twenty years online this week. (We didn’t realize the Internet was twenty years old, either.) As daily visitors to the site for more than eleven of those years, we can’t imagine moviegoing without it, even as we strain to remember how we kept track of films at all before finding it. We also can’t count how many films we’ve discovered because of it.

IMDB is for our money the Internet at its best, even if we’re not quite comfortable yet with its recent layout redesign. That just means we’re getting older, too.

We’ll be back next week. Thank you for reading.

-Michael Kabel

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DVD Review: Star Trek

Action-packed reboot of the beloved franchise boldly comes to DVD and Blu-Ray this week.

One of the biggest hits of last summer’s movie season – and a giant cause for relief among the franchise’s devoted fans – J.J. Abram’s (Lost, Mission: Impossible 3) re-energizing take on the Star Trek mythology arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray this week in a variety of single and multiple disc editions. It’s a hell of an action movie, and though explicit comparisons to rival franchise Star Wars aren’t entirely fair, this new Trek has the same sense of dizzying momentum. Maybe too much momentum, and possibly too much action for its own good.

The Star Trek TV series and films have never preoccupied themselves with stunts and pyrotechnics, often proudly wearing their cerebral ambitions on their form-fitting sleeves. While Abrams and company have jettisoned such a restrained attitude in favor of adventure, the new film’s bravado often sometimes drags it down or lets it skip over important plot clarification. Also noticeably missing is the Utopian optimism that, at its best, let the original series and its various children transcend their budgets as well as the usual pitfalls endemic to episodic science fiction.

The story’s basics are familiar but made vividly fresh by a crisp production design as well as Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s taut script. Centuries into the future, young James T. Kirk (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) spends his childhood near the Iowa shipyards that construct massive starships used by the United Federation of Planets to bring stability to the galaxy. An orphan whose father died saving the U.S.S. Kelvin from an attack by the belligerent alien Romulans, young Kirk is recruited into Starfleet by veteran officer Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter) on the strength of his natural aptitude and his father’s heroic legacy.

Jump ahead three years and Kirk has breezed through San Francisco’s Starfleet Academy, even rigging a no-win mission simulation test (which veteran Trek fans will recognize as the Kobayashi Maru from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan) in his favor. A disciplinary hearing, spearheaded by Academy instructor Spock (Zachary Quinto), is interrupted by a distress signal from Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. With the rest of Starfleet’s armada preoccupied elsewhere, it’s up to the cadets to respond in seven brand new starships including the venerable U.S.S. Enterprise. The Romulan craft that destroyed the Kelvin has returned again, and with help from his friend “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban, The Bourne Supremacy) Kirk stows away beneath Captain Pike’s notice to help out.

The action that follows includes time travel, black holes, the destruction of planets, parachuting from low-Earth orbit, and swashbuckling sword fights. It often seems as if frequent Abrams collaborators Orci and Kurtzman threw everything they could devise into the chain-of-set-pieces script, leaving no idea discarded. For the most part that damn-the-torpedoes strategy works. Other times, including a tedious man vs. monster chase sequence on an ice moon (itself too derivative by half of The Empire Strikes Back), all that action instead feels superfluous and distracting from the main story thread.

And it’s a very linear thread. One thing happens and then another, each sequence building on the one before rather than happening from circumstance. Abrams et. al. have a lot to accomplish in the film’s two hours, yet despite the diversions, repetitious stunts and sometimes glaring plot holes the story makes sense without seeming simplistic; it’s easy to see where everything might have dissolved into chaos instead. The stakes, thanks to the Romulan commander Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), are demonstrably high enough that the rapid pitch continuously seems justified. Add that to Kirk and company’s relative inexperience and you feel justified in believing the danger.

What’s missing most is backstory, and context. We are told that the Federation is a noble cause but not of its origins, or why Earth and other alien worlds remain devoted to its purpose. The time-travel elements are explained but not developed, so that depending on your familiarity with that trope’s mental contortions the ensuring plot details will seem opaque at best and frustrating at worst. Kirk’s childhood is given only the barest amount of explanation, likewise the motivations of bad guy Nero or the Romulans in general. Extant Trek continuity is apparently filled with details on almost all of the above (we’ve just scratched the surface ourselves), so there was no shortage of source material from which to draw. Maybe Abrams and company have deferred such embellishments until the already-announced sequel? Whatever the case, the story needed greater depth to bring the film’s setting into a completely coherent focus.

Luckily the cast is up to the script’s ambitious challenges. Pine, given the task of bringing the famously pre-politically correct Kirk to the modern age, finds his character not in the swagger but rather in the relentless self-confidence that made William Shatner’s Kirk legendary. Quinto, a talented actor not given much to do on Heroes anymore except beckon or arch his formidable eyebrows, builds Spock from barely restrained and (oddly enough) seething emotion. Urban is underused as the crusty Dr. McCoy, as is Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott. Playing the heavy, Bana makes the most of a perfunctory role. In origin movies like this it’s enough for the villain to simply be menacing, but thanks again to impeccable costuming and production design a large part of that work is already accomplished. Still, he makes the most of each line of dialogue allowed him.

Speaking of design, the new Enterprise vessel looks great most of the time. This latest interpretation of the classic shape is sleek and detailed, keeping the recognizable form while incorporating new elements including a dynamic new electrical effect to the warp nacelles. The bridge is a swirl of translucent display screens and fluorescent lights, selling the movie’s futuristic setting all by itself. Less impressive, unfortunately, are a generic-looking medical bay and an engineering section that’s exactly as anonymous as any petrochemical refinery. For such a classic and famous ship you’d expect a bold new vision of its engine room to be just as impressive and well-thought out. It’s something to consider as Abrams and his group boldly go into plans for the sequel.

- Michael Kabel

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(Note: An earlier version of this review appeared for the film’s theatrical release.)

Star Trek: Great Trekspectations

Seven cool things about the Star Trek universe we hope to see in the new movie.

The long-awaited new “reboot” of the Star Trek franchise opens in just 30 days (Update: Read our review of the new film here) and the previews growing ever more pervasive on television and online have just begun to reveal the new film’s rollicking story. We expect that’ll continue up until its opening, but in the meantime – being somewhat neophyte Trekkers ourselves – we’ve come up with a list of people, places, and things we’d like to see shown or at least visually referenced. Each one, we think, could ramp up the cool factor even further.

The following list isn’t in any particular order, and we apologize in advance for any gaps in our knowledge. These are ideas and concepts we’ve come across over the years, and we’ve taken what we could from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, to fill in the blanks. Also, what’s below doesn’t necessarily include everything from the semi- and non-canonical expanded universe of Trek novels, video games, comic books, cartoons, and role playing games. We’ve barely dipped a toe into that ocean.

Romulan birds-of-prey in formation

The Battle of Cheron and the defeat of the Romulan Star Empire: The Romulans (like Mr. Spock’s Vulcans, but craftier and far more malicious) are the bad guys of the new film, but in Star Trek continuity Earth and its allies fought a long and mutually devastating war with their vast Star Empire a century before. Little is known about this conflict’s climactic battle except that the defeat was a humiliating loss for the Romulans and directly led to the formation of the Unied Federation of Planets.

If other franchises like Star Wars and Battlestar: Galactica have anything on Star Trek, it’s a well-known space battle. Showing such an event as a Midway-in-space-style slugfest would fix that once and for all.

Robert April, the Enterprise‘s “first” captain: When Gene Roddenberry wrote the first Star Trek treatment for MGM in 1964, the ship was called the Yorktown and was captained by Robert April, a part reportedly meant for Jack Lord or Lloyd Bridges, among others. Over the years a number of canonical and non-canonical sources have incorporated and fleshed out April’s character, establishing his British heritage and giving him a more militaristic bearing than his successors Christopher Pike (played in the new movie by Bruce Greenwood) and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Seeing this earliest of Star Trek creations, possibly in his later career as an ambassador, would make a great tribute to the mid-20th Century bravado of the original series.

The legacy of Star Trek: Enterprise: Probably the least-loved of the six series, Enterprise was nevertheless exciting and remarkably well-acted TV sci-fi. Especially in its second two seasons, when its storylines and tone took smarter but markedly darker turns, the prequel series offered multi-episode arcs that settled a lot of long-running fan debates while also fixing inconsistencies in the overarching Trek timeline and universe. And it managed all that while still remaining the most action-oriented Trek yet.

Honestly, we expect this black sheep of the Trek franchises to get short shrift in the movie, but it deserves some kind of acknowledgement for its efforts to explain the backstory of every series set after it.

Gary Mitchell, Captain Kirk’s best friend: The pilot to the original series featured helmsman (and possible First Officer) Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, Kirk’s buddy from their days at Starfleet Academy and as wily an officer as Kirk himself. Driven mad from psychic powers gained on a world at the edge of known space, he attempted to kill Kirk and the Enterprise’s crew before meeting his own death at Kirk’s hands. Mitchell was played by Gary Lockwood, who two years later starred as the astronaut murdered by the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There’s no mention of  a Lockwood character in IMDB’s listing of the new film’s cast, which is kind of a shame. Introducing a character that died in the series’ first episode would have lent a grim in-joke to the crew’s “first” adventure, if indeed the new film works as a prequel to the 1960′s series.

Andorians, the warlike anti-Vulcans: Blue-skinned inhabitants of a frozen moon that orbits a ringed gas giant, Andorians are fiery-tempered warriors who pride themselves on letting emotions guide their decisions. The historical enemies of the dispassionate Vulcans (who live on a world of deserts and volcanoes), they were among Earth’s strongest allies in the war with the Romulans and then later a founding member of the Federation.

They’re also among the most prominent aliens in the Trek galaxy, appearing in all its three time periods. It almost wouldn’t be the same without one or two of them manning a station aboard the Enterprise or filling in the ranks at Starfleet Command. And speaking of cool alien races…

Caitians, the Federation’s cat-people: One of two feline-derived species in the expanded, non-canon universe, Caitians were also briefly glimpsed in the gallery shown at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Various stories and sourcebooks published over the last two decades describe them, somewhat ironically, as a peaceful, vegetarian, and spiritual people who value loyalty above all else.

An interplanetary civilization like the Federation can’t have too many aliens interacting with humans. And cat-people are cool by definition.

A map of the Neutral Zone from the original series

The Neutral Zone, the no-man’s land between Federation and Romulan space: Part of the bitter peace created at the end of the Earth-Romulan War, the Neutral Zone was established as a no-fly zone between the two warring powers. That didn’t stop both sides from heavily fortifying their boundaries, with the new Federation building massive stellar fortresses out of hollowed-out asteroids towed into formation for that purpose.

Actually, of everything on this list we give the Neutral Zone the best odds of making an appearance. Not for nothing, but the Zone and the Romulan Star Empire were introduced in the episode ”Balance of Terror,” considered by many (including series creator Gene Roddenberry) to be among the best of the original series.

Star Trek opens nationwide May 7, with international release dates varying through that week.

- Michael Kabel

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Preview: Star Trek

Boldly going where plenty of other blogs are also going this week.

The trailer for J.J. Abrams’ $150 million reboot of the beloved, maligned Star Trek franchise debuted this past week, igniting lots of controversy but promising at least plenty of curiosity. Going on the two slam bang minutes of the trailer alone, we can already see lots of potential and maybe a couple of problems. (Update: read our review here.)

The original geek culture obsessoin, the Star Trek franchise – six televisions series, ten movies, innumerable novels – has a well-established continuity and canon that’s revered, to put it politely, by its tens of millions of fans. (Memory Alpha, the leviathan Trek wiki, is the gold standard to which all other fan wikis aspire.) Abrams and his fellow producers have avowed to keep as much of the original TV series’ continuity as possible (though they’ve apparently already written out Kirk’s best friend) while making the basic premise more contemporary. That seems like a good thing and a bad thing. Probably no ”trekker” is interested in seeing a sexier Enterprise crew flit about in a generic space-opera adventure. On the other hand, and to be bluntly honest, a lot of the original 1960s series looks dated as all hell when viewed today. The film will have to strike that fine balance to really please longtime fans while bring in new ones. To speculate wildly, it looks to do just that… but only barely.

The film’s story circles around the earliest days of the starship Enterprise, when it was still under the command of Captain Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood, The Sweet Hereafter). Starships are under attack by a Romulan aggressor named Nero (Eric Bana, Munich), including the ship commanded by James T. Kirk’s (Chris Pine, Bottle Shock) father. Kirk, a lifetime discipline case, is at Starfleet Academy but wants to get out and fight as soon as possible. The Enterprise,  with Kirk stowed away, races to stop Nero.

In the continuity of the television series, the Romulan Star Empire (like the Klingons, but smarter and based on the Roman Empire) fought a long and mutually devastating war with Earth, a war that ultimately led to an uneasy peace and the founding of the United Federation of Planets. Unlike the Klingons, the Romulans never really show their soft, honorable center or come around to being good guys after all. They’re are bent on continuous Imperial expansion, including Earth and its allies, such as Spock’s home planet of Vulcan. Basically, they’re the worst kind of scary adversaries, more so than the Klingons for their intelligence and guile. (Read our recent feature Great Trekspectations for a more in-depth explanation of the war.)

The trailer looks to get that spirit of a Federation just asserting itself, and of a glittering 23rd Century, even if the use of antique sportscars and gratuitous flashes of lingerie look, well, stupid. In fact the trailer’s whole prelude, with a prebuscent Kirk slo-diving out of a convertible, seems a little ridiculous. We’re also not sure showing the Enterprise getting built on Earth is a smart idea. We understand Abrams’ point that the movie has to get grounded on Earth before heading off into space, but the ship looks weird and awkward half-built in a field. Besides which, the unveiling of each new Enterprise in spacedock is sort of a Trek tradition, and ignoring it means turning the film’s back on many a fan’s warm memories.

On a brighter level, while Pine is still something of an unknown commodity some of the other casting is nothing short of inspired. Zachary Quinto (Heroes) looks born to play Spock, and Greenwood is an excellent choice to play the doomed Captain Pike, a role played on the TV series by Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers). Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as Bones McCoy have reportedly built their performances as tribute to, respectively, James Doohan and DeForest Kelley. Bana has never really gotten the attention he deserves, but Abrams and co-producer Damon Lindelof love their villains – look how Lost has turned into The Aventures of Ben Linus, Super Genius - so Nero’s character almost certainly won’t suffer for depth or screen time. And of course, Leonard Nemoy will return in a time-travel sequence, though The Shat has sadly opted not to participate.

So, the trailer. It’s a little too action-packed, maybe, but that’s what early teaser trailers are supposed to be. In particular, watch for the images of the Enterprise corridors, which look gorgeously futuristic, and listen for Pegg’s Scottish cadences. They’re the parts that will relieve old-school Trek fans while possibly exciting newcomers to the franchise. The film opens May 8, 2009.

- Michael Kabel

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DVD: Cloverfield

Spoiler: It’s Got a Monster!

It’s a sad fact that with so many films and television series produced each year, the same storylines get recycled again and again. Sometimes, though, filmmakers will synthesize multiple successful premises into something that not only survives on its own merit, but also begs the question, “Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?”

Cloverfield is equal parts Godzilla, The Blair Witch Project and Aliens, with some Miracle Mile and H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos thrown in for good measure. A giant, seemingly invincible monster crawls from the Atlantic Ocean and ransacks New York. The real story, though, is the struggle of a group of hip twentysomethings to rescue their injured friend and escape before the military “drops the hammer” and annihilates Manhattan. Shot entirely in first person perspective, the action is chronicled by alternately rotating characters via a handheld video camera. It’s a clever concept that transplants the viewer into the action alongside the protagonists, heightening the audience’s suspense to an intensely personal level. 

Besides the tension of the protagonists’ escape, there’s enough terror-inducing elements to unsettle any viewer.  However, with a minimum of gore and profanity (it’s rated PG-13!), the sometimes-horrific events never feel gratuitous or self-indulgent. 

While the suspense is clearly the film’s driving force, it’s the ancillary events surrounding the attack that establish Cloverfield as an ultimately moving drama. At the film’s core is a love story between two longtime friends (Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman) that highlights the selflessness of the human spirit in times of catastrophe; yet the filmmakers also wisely depict the inherent greed that unfortunately contrasts with such selflessness in extreme situations. 

Make no mistake though, the film has its flaws.  Screenwriter Drew Goddard is not above cheating to further the plot; one brief sequence rapidly steers our heroes through four different locales strung together by impossible coincidence. More distracting is the tendency to deviate from the action at opportune moments only to abruptly resume at a new plot point.  I personally have no desire to sit through a Warhol-esque documentary of people climbing stairs for an hour, and including such minutiae would naturally interrupt the flow of tension. Still, the decision to ignore moments of little narrative consequence inevitably intrudes upon the otherwise airtight verisimilitude of the storyline proper. It’s a tricky balance that director Matt Reeves never completely pulls off.

As the film’s first twenty minutes take place in exactly the kind of beautiful-people fantasyland popularized by The WB, it’s no surprise that the film already looks dated three months after its release. The tedious exposition fails to establish the individual characters as anything more than stock characters: the lovers, the alpha male, the loudmouth, the bitch, et cetera, et cetera. And with very limited opportunities for internal conflict, it’s impossible to evaluate the acting abilities of the film’s glamorous cast members. They mainly need to look scared – but they do this well. 

Cloverfield might be a singularly unique example of a film in which character development actually should take a back seat to plot: if one becomes too emotionally invested in the characters, it’s possible that the visceral and compelling effect of embedding the audience into the action would diminish. While Reeves manages to effectively create a virtual tour through a disaster film, I couldn’t help wonder if the film’s bleak conclusion would have greater resonance if the characters were fleshed out a little more.

Nevertheless, Cloverfield remains a positively enthralling experience. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, to be sure; but then, you probably haven’t seen it quite like this, or quite this well done.

 - Steve Kabel