I’m picky about movies, and you have to admit… almost every movie that’s been released lately has really, really sucked.  There have been some winners though… and when I find one that I think was good, I like to share it. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on new releases when I see them… and oldies you might have missed.

For now, let’s catch up (succinctly) on the movies SuperAwesomeBlog has missed!!

Watchmen

Most superhero movies are either thin and poorly developed commercial machines, or you-can-see-the-wires poorly made. Watchmen was an excellent homage to the graphic novel, which many (myself included) consider one of the best works in the genre.  While almost every scene felt like it was ripped out of the book’s pages, the characters in the movie sometimes felt thin and not well developed (but what do you expect when a book is turned into a movie?) Interestingly I found the most inhuman character, Dr. Manhattan, to be the character I sympathized with the most. Watchmen is a superhero movie done right.

Star Trek

SAB previously reviewed Star Trek and I stand by it – this is a great movie for non-trekkers, and a good movie for Star Trek fans.  Without this movie it would have been time to order a casket for the Star Trek franchise. Sadly the only thing spawned from Star Trek (2009) so far has been Star Trek Online. Gag.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

When I was reading the Harry Potter books, each sequel was better than the one that preceded it. With Half Blood Prince the same story holds true – this film is dark and brooding, with enough fun to be Harry Potter. Like any novel turned movie, the characters and story are somewhat thinner, but the feel of the books stays true.  I can’t wait for the next one two!

District 9

I think that Science Fiction is often at its best when it looks at a problem from the real world, puts it in a fantastical setting and then deals with it in a direct way that might be difficult if it wasn’t done with a Sci-Fi veil.  In this fashion, District 9 is a veiled examination of apartheid.  It is very disturbing at times, enough so that I don’t know if I’d really like to watch it again. I think everyone should watch District 9 (if only once!)

Avatar

Avatar got a lot of criticism for being, basically, Pocahontas in space.  Which it mostly is. But I liked Disney’s Pocahontas!  Avatar’s special effects were amazing… and really it doesn’t have all that going for it besides that. But the visuals really were amazing.  Don’t see this if floating mountains upset you – see this if 3D floating mounts are cool (they are.)

Up

What is it about Disney / Pixar movies that always make me cry?  Up is a very touching story about love and loss. You should definitely see it.

Well, that’s my succinct list of the greats from 2009!  There are certainly more, but in my opinion these are the gems that if you missed, you should see. Get out there and watch some movies!

Star Trek fans have a bad reputation of living up to the word fan, derived from “fanatic.”   So Star Trek films get a bad reputation as being something for the “crazies,” films that are outside the mainstream, though (thankfully for Paramamount) there are enough crazies to make feature length Star Trek films worth making.  I consider myself one of this lot, although “Trekker” or “Trekkie” is a more polite term.

Over the last two decades I’ve watched Star Trek blossom into such amazing acheivements as The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, fade into Voyager and decay further into an ill conceived idea called “Enterprise.”  With “Star Trek: Nemesis” I was almost certain that it was all over for Star Trek – it seemed that all the creative juice had been sapped and the stories had become zombies of previous creative effort.

The folks at Paramount smelled death on a precious franchise. With only two options available, retire it forever or do a Galactica style reboot, the studio chose the easier option (after all, the last time Star Trek got cancelled a massive letter drive from die-hard fans resurrected the original series for a third and final season.

Because of the unique nature of Star Trek as a franchise it’s not really fair to give it only one review: the film is going to be something different to the action film loving movie-goer, which I consider myself,  than its’ going to be to the core of Star Trek fans, of which I’m also a member.  Thus I present you with my two reviews for Star Trek (2009):

WARNING: Contains Spoilers.

Star Trek (Everyone Besides Fans)

Rotten Tomatoes gives Star Trek 96%. That’s a fantastic rating, and it’s deserved.  Star Trek is everything you might want Summer Blockbuster to be: exciting, quick moving, interesting with good acting and a good story. If you want a fun movie to see this summer, this is it.  Star Trek has something for everybody, and the acting is excellent.

The techno-babble is at a minimum this time around, and plot devices are merely that: plot devices. No need to explain that the time distortion is a quantum fillament tear transiting subspace, etc. Probably the best Star Trek film for the masses ever made.  Seriously.

Star Trek (Fans)

Something feels wrong. It starts when the young James T. Kirk is driving in his car and you hear a very anachronistic sound: a Nokia phone ring.  The one that goes “do do do do do do do do do do do do doooooo.”   Kirk looks down at the digital display in the car, and sees a Nokia logo.  Later someone orders a Budweiser product at a bar.

The stickler would point out that after World War III (which happens in the Star Trek continuum) Nokia and Budweiser probably wouldn’t exist anymore, let alone currency of any kind (humans give it up in the future.) I don’t have a problem with a phone ring or a beer, I have a big problem with Nokia and Budweiser, and all the other horribly blatant advertisements starting out the movie. It put me in a bad frame of mind for the rest of the entire film. It does get better from there though.

The plot has a great number of issues in the form of plot holes, which I won’t go into. Simply put if you vested any feeling in what Star Trek was, you’re probably going to have some problems with this movie.

The Final Analysis

Star Trek 2009 isn’t old Star Trek, it’s new Star Trek. It’s a good movie, but it’s different. If you’re willing to let the past be the past you’ll like this movie even if you’re a Star Trek fan, everyone else should probable just like it from the start.  The “look” is also garish and jarring at times. I couldn’t count the number of Lens Flares, and the bridge of the Enterprise looks like an Apple Store, and the equipment like iTech.

In the final analysis however, it was either this or a tombstone.  Star Trek needs some fresh blood, and this is it.  I couldn’t help thinking that this isn’t the kind of Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry would like.  “But Super Awesome Blog Guy, Majel Barret Roddenberry liked it! She even did the computer voice!”

She also liked “Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda.” Shudder.

Also, the new Kirk (Chris Pine) is really hot, and you get to see him in his underwear. How could I complain that much? Go see Star Trek and enjoy the movie, and let’s hope the movies only get better from here!

For some time now Star Trek has been a ship lost at sea.  Fans have seen the franchise go from incredible heights in The Next Generation (TNG) and Deep Space Nine (DS9) to the gradual decline of Star Trek Voyager, to the missed opprotunity that was Star Trek: Enterprise.  It seemed that Star Trek: First Contact would keep the light alive, but the lackluster follow-up of Star Trek: Insurrection and the total disappointment of Star Trek: Nemesis looked like the end of Star Trek.  Indeed, at the end of Nemesis when Data dies in a sad, sad imitation of Spock’s much more meaningful death, I remember being more saddneed by what looked like the death of Star Trek as a whole than one iconic character.

Star Trek is like a phoenix, and its ashes are most certainly the dollars of longing fans, desperate to experience what Star Trek was again.  Hollywood knows this, and as long as fans are depserate enough to pay to see whatever has Star Trek plastered on it the franchise will survive.

Sadly, this phenomenom is not the ideal engine for creative vision.  Enter the pompously titled “Star Trek”.

Yep, that was Leonard Nemoy…what’s he doing there?  Good question.  The SciFi site IO9 has a scene-by-scene breakdown of the Star Trek trailer, if you’re interested in what the hell’s going on.

I found this trailer to be an ominous omen of what is to come for the Star Trek franchise.  The actors all look about right, but just about everything else looks wrong.  The Apple Store Enterprise Bridge, the goofy tentacle spaceships, and the Star Wars aliens all make me think that this, perhaps, will the the final nail.

A niche movie if ever there was one, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising follows both the real life and roleplaying fantasy life of a group of, you guessed it, Gamers.  Roleplayers to be specific.   The film shifts, akwardly, between poorly acted scenes around a gaming table, and slightly better acted scenes (not by much though) set in the fantasy world in which the gamers are roleplaying.

Gamers has a number of laughable scenes, like the unprovoked murder of several innocent peasants throughout the movie, killed out of boredom with the GM.  Sadly there aren’t enough of these diamonds in the rough, and many scenes go on far longer than they should.

If you’re a roleplayer and you’re watching this movie with someone who isn’t, you might find the whole thing embarrassing…  not just for how bad the film itself is but for how bad actual roleplayers act in-game, and at how dorky a hobby roleplaying really can be.

The thing that really pulls the movie down is the acting.  It is as though my gaming friends and I decided to get together and film a movie with whatever we had lying around…. which looks to be the story with Gamers. At times I almost got the feeling the movie was trying to be a cult classic (an aspiration it never rises to.)

The spirit of the film endures though:  a mostly good natured look at roleplaying games, pointing out the absurdities of several conventions, and for actual roleplayers probably bringing back some fond memories of wacky games of their own.  Near the end it even tries to draw a line between muchkin players (out to win at all costs) and those who play for the story telling element, for what roleplaying should “really” be.

Is this movie for you?  If you roleplay and have some time to kill (and don’t mind some poorly acted scenes) you might like it.  For almost everyone else, probably not.

2   Dice Out Of   5  (Nice Try)

A few years ago I saw a documentary about Star Trek’s fans and Star Trek conventions called “Trekkies.” It took an unabashed look at Star Trek’s fans and focused on several who most would believe have taken it too far.  As a Star Trek fan myself I found the entire experience to be  interesting and in some ways unsettling.

I’ve been to Star Trek conventions (where at least once I wore a uniform), I may own a few shirts that have a logo or two on them, and I have an unnaturally encyclopedic knowledge of all manner of Star Trek minutia.  This said, many (not all) of the people chosen in “Trekkies” appeared to be the most highly distilled form of Star Trek fans, giving homage to the origin of the word fan: fanatic. The documentary wouldn’t have been as interesting otherwise of course. Monster Camp is a similar experience, especially if you roleplay like my friends and me.

In a way I’ve always thought of roleplaying as a blend of “playing” like when you were a child, and telling a story collectively.  Most roleplayers, myself included, usually play in their living room or around a kitchen table with game books and other tomes piled up and character sheets scattered in front of the players. There is one director of the story, a Game Master (GM) and a game session usually lasts a couple hours.  Monster Camp takes it more than a few steps further.

The documentary follows a group of Live-action Roleplayers, or  LARPers , who are members of the New England Roleplaying Orginization (NERO)   The players of NERO like to roleplay, only in full costume (usually), outside, and in large numbers.  They are pretty dedicated, at times in the movie the temperature drops below 0, yet they remain in costume throughout.

During the course of the documentary it looks like most people are having a lot of fun, but you get a sinking sense throughout that things aren’t quite right with many of the players.  The leader of their chapter constantly complains about one thing or the other, from not enough directors (kind of like game-masters) to drama between many of the players.

Speaking of drama, this movie’s players have a lot of it (and not the thespian kind.)  From petty jealousy about a rival’s  girlfriend to a couple that had met and broken up during their LARPing, it’s sometimes surreal.  It serves as an interesting reminder that many of these players are real people and that occasionally their real life problems enter their game.

It’s also pretty clear that some players are severe escapists.  Some notable examples are Carter, who lives with Brandon. Brandon graduated from High School, works at a grocery store, and seems to be putting off going to college.  Carter lives with Brandon, apparently for free, doesn’t have a job and plays World of Warcraft when Brandon is gone, and video games when he’s there.  Dave, one of the directors plays WOW constantly to the point that his daughter told him he needs to spend more time with her, and less on WOW.  His solution? Make a new computer and install WOW on it so they can play together.  I’m not sure this is exactly what his daughter had in mind.  In the end he makes the poor decision to buy the local chapter of NERO, which I’m sure will only divide him from his family responsibilities further.

It’s not all bad news though. Interestingly a number of parents seem to play NERO with their kids.  Kelly (or Evad the Cook) brings his teenage daughter with him.  They appear to have a pretty healthy relationship and it looks like they’re both really into it.  Kelly even says he’s doing it because he wants his daughter to remember him as “cool.”  Pretty awesome.

OVERALL

Through a mirror darkly indeed.  Just like Trekkies, I saw reflections of myself in this movie… usually disturbingly so. I think my friends and I will be sticking to the kitchen table.  The film is very well made and fun, the people are complicated and interesting, and the subject matter is bizarre enough to keep your attention.

5 Dice Out Of 5   (Super Awesome)