The Wolverine (Mangold, 2013)

Finally: The Wolverine story comic fans have waited to see. Logan's adventure in modern-day Japan is a very popular story, and the loyal X-Men followers have patiently waited to see it on the big screen for over a decade.

After the disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), The Wolverine is a welcome return to the famous X-Man. Benefitting from a strong performance by Hugh Jackman, the film will delight both hardcore franchise fans and newcomers alike. The Wolverine is one of the few members of the X-Men capable of standing alone in his own film, and this movie remarkably proves that point.

Set after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine sees Logan having to deal with the haunting memory of a former lover (whose cameo is cool at first, but repetitive as the film progresses), and has frequent flashbacks to his troubled past. But almost out of the blue, he meets a mysterious Japanese warrior (Rila Fukushima), who informs him that her master wants to say goodbye to the Wolverine that saved his life so many years ago. Logan reluctantly follows her to Japan, and discovers a shocking truth in the country he has not seen since World War II. The Wolverine must now make a fateful choice that could drastically affect his future forever.

The Wolverine is Hugh Jackman's vehicle; it easily remains the actor's best performance in the role that made him a household name since 2003's X2: X-Men United. James Mangold proves a better director than Origin's Gavin Hood, and captures the essence of the comic book story by maintaining the titular character's personality as well as the beautiful locales of Japan.

The villains are pretty pathetic, and normally would not stand a chance against Wolverine. The screenwriters, although they did a fair job otherwise, should have chose better bad guys to at least make the cockamamie villainous plot seem somewhat threatening. Nevertheless, there are several genuine thrills to experience in the picture.

As an action movie, there's enough mutant battles and samurai fights to keep audiences interested. The stunt work is incredible and (almost) believable. However, the drama portions are also well done, thanks in part to the committed performances. The Wolverine does not rely on CGI to craft a well-integrated story, which is a nice change of pace from the normal superhero fare.

There's plenty for comic fans to chew on, but those new to X-Men can still find enjoyment from this solid action flick. I would recommend reviewing X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but this is a story that rightfully depends on Hugh Jackman and the viewer's appreciation for Wolverine. Thankfully, it succeeds on both these levels.

Four out of five stars.

The Lone Ranger (Verbinski, 2013)

It's horribly written and edited, but The Lone Ranger remains a wallop of a good time.

Produced by the team behind The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, The Lone Ranger will certainly appeal to viewers looking for mindless adventure. It has a very long runtime, but overall keeps the action moving so that audiences do not notice. The multitude of actors are committed, the direction is solid, and the plot is unnecessarily complex.

Overall, a typical Gore Verbinski film.

The Lone Ranger is faultily narrated by Tonto (Johnny Depp), a Native American warrior who recounts the story of the Lone Ranger to a young boy. Basically, John Reid (Armie Hammer) is a man of law and justice, committed to the system and naive in the ways of the real world. He returns from the city to his Wild West home, where a dangerous criminal named Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) has recently escaped. When Reid goes after the criminal with his sheriff brother's deputes, the rangers are ambushed by Butch's goons. All of the rangers are killed, and Reid is left for dead.

Tonto finds Reid and, believing him to be a Spirit Walker, saves the lawyer from the desert. Reid wants to bring Butch to justice, while Tonto has his own ulterior motives behind wanting to find the criminal. The two team up, Reid dons a mask, and they set out to bring justice to the old West.

The writing is never in focus. The actions of the characters do not make much sense, and the story progresses rapidly where it show go slow and glacially where it should go fast. The writer knew all the characters well enough to do justice to them, but just tries to fit too much in at one time.

The biggest problem with The Lone Ranger is in it's core narration: the movie blames many of its plot holes on the fact that Tonto is an old man who forgets things. This leaves the audience shaking their heads in disbelief as Reid and Tonto are constantly placed in ridiculous situations that have no resolutions. One minute, one man's in a jail cell, and the next, he's out in the open. It remains a combination of poor editing and writing that is never truly resolved.

But the target audience of The Lone Ranger will not care about editing or directional issues, so for those people, the film indeed remains enjoyable throughout. It does have a lot of characters, but all are developed enough to avoid confusion. Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp lead the cast with enjoyable chemistry and great stuntwork.

The Lone Ranger remains a fun tale, not very well made, but highly entertaining. It makes viewers feel like they are young boys sitting in front of a ten-inch TV screen, smiling over each explosion and gunshot.

Do not go in expecting to see a work of art, kemosabe, and just enjoy the movie for what it is.

Three out of five stars.

The Heat (Feig, 2013)

Sandra Bullock's Ashburn and Mellisa McCarthy's Mullins are the new Murtaugh and Riggs.

One of the funniest movies released in the past decade, The Heat delivers as both buddy-cop gold and comedic genius. The jokes are right on cue, and at times it's hard to hear the next line after the hilarity of the previous leaves the auditorium in hysterics. It's raunchy, hilarious, and vastly entertaining to watch. 

Sandra Bullock plays Sarah Ashburn, an uptight, by-the-book New York FBI agent who's cockiness makes her disliked by almost all her co-workers. She vies for a promotion, and thinks her chance has come when she's assigned to take down a drug lord in Boston. In that city, she meets Mellisa McCarthy's Shannon Mullins, an extremely vulgar city cop who fights her way through cases. Ashburn and Mullins butt heads at first, but eventually realize that they need each other to finish the job. 

Unfortunately, The Heat is as predictable as it is funny. But that does not stop Bullock and McCarthy from giving two of the best performances of their careers. Sandra Bullock is fantastic in these type of roles, and she is finally back on the map after almost four years of not following up her Oscar win. McCarthy has no moral line, so her jokes can take audiences anywhere, anytime. That makes her unpredictable and exceptionally hilarious. The supporting players do not get much to work with, and at most get one or two funny punchlines in before McCarthy shows them up. 

The Heat also subtly addresses themes of sexual discrimination in the justice system, corruption in the police force, and family values. The pacing works for a comedy, but it takes longer than anticipated for the film to get truly entertaining. The beginning seems uncomfortable, with McCarthy swearing every other word and Ashburn just being annoying to watch. It picks up speed after the two finally meet. 

Director Paul Feig provides a funny summer comedy with The Heat. But it's Bullock and McCarthy's hugely entertaining performances that makes viewers want to stay. 

Four out of five stars. 

Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013)

"You will give the people an ideal to strive towards... But in time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders." 

Apparently, Jor-El was not referring to his son's latest film debacle. 

Zack Snyder's Man of Steel is a hollow, lackluster, and no-fun adaptation of Superman's origin story. The visual effects are second rate at best, with CGI fight scenes looking more like a video game than an actual movie. Snyder sacrifices story and character development for excruciatingly long fight sequences, and seems not to care about the poor editing as well. 

Man of Steel starts with the planet Krypton's final hours, when General Zod (Michael Shannon) launches a coup against the elitist Kryptonian government. After a massive battle, Zod and his associates are placed in a black hole to suffer for all eternity for their crimes. Jor-El (Russell Crowe) and his wife send their recently born son to Earth to spare him from the destruction of their home world, and preserve the memory of their culture. 

After Krypton is destroyed, the baby lands on Earth, possessing superhuman strength and abilities due to some mumbo jumbo alien science. His childhood is told in a series of flashbacks, while the adult Clark Kent/Superman (Henry Cavill) tries to learn about his true nature from clues left by his father. Meanwhile, reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) investigates mysterious alien appearances across the globe, while General Zod comes to Earth to conquer the planet. Superman must now choose whether or not join the only surviving members of his race, or save the planet he has come to call home. 

The casting, on paper, seems excellent. Henry Cavill plays a decent Superman, but the Clark Kent parts are extremely uninteresting and poorly executed. Michael Shannon just yells a lot as Zod, with no character depth and pointless angry speeches. Amy Adams would be a good Lois Lane if she was actually playing Lois Lane; the character in Man of Steel is so far fetched and separated from the heroine that it's hard to tell what the writers were even thinking. Lawrence Fishburne's limited screen time as editor Perry White is wasted on pointless action and hammy dialogue. Russell Crowe's Jor-El is the only truly good performance in the film, making the corny screenplay have some girth and meaning. He gets the best lines and the best scenes (if there is such a thing in Man of Steel). 

Man of Steel takes everything one step farther than it should be. While the flashback idea is nice, the audience stops caring about them by the fourth or fifth depressing childhood memory. Each battle is at least 5-10 minutes too long, and there are several fight sequences that are just completely unnecessary. Most of it is just wanton destruction. Audiences will spend the majority of the action with their face in their palms, with buildings blowing up for seemingly no apparent reason. 

With Christopher Nolan producing and Zack Snyder directing, Man of Steel should have been a sure thing. Instead, audiences get an awkwardly humorless and overly long film that takes itself way too seriously. The Man of Steel deserves so much more than this. 

One and a half out of five stars. 

The Purge (DeMonaco, 2013)

The United States of America, thanks to her New Founding Fathers, is at a time of utopian bliss. Unemployment is down to 1%, and there is virtually no crime. All of this happiness exists because of The Purge, an annual event in which all crime, including murder, is legal for a 12-hour period.

This creative premise and original idea for a film, unfortunately, is wasted on a standard horror film.

James DeMonaco directs The Purge like a routine home invasion thriller- and it deserves so much more than that. With today's standards of horror releases being one gorefest after another, The Purge had the potential to become a unique and refreshing scary movie. Instead, it's a predictable shoot-out with no meaningful depth added to the characters or story.

The Purge is told from the perspective of a wealthy family, able to afford protection because the husband (Ethan Hawke) sells the armor technology to upper class households. His wife (Lena Heady) understands all the "good" The Purge does, but the children (Max Burkholder and Adelaide Kane) are more hesitant of its inherent implications. When this year's Purge rolls around, the family locks down their house and waits out another brutal evening. But only a few hours into the mayhem, the son lets in a mysterious stranger who is being stalked by a gang of ultra violent socialites. The gang demands that the family now release the stranger- or they will kill everyone inside under the protection of the United States government.

Despite an intriguing beginning, the audience completely loses interest in the characters and their fates by the second half. The characters are just too stupid to hold any sort of connection with them. The Purge almost makes fun of itself at times, throwing in hammy dialogue with mediocre twists that makes the bloodbath seem like harmless fun. The Purge never gets as scary or violent as it promises.

There remains so much that filmmakers can do with this highly original premise; it's built for a horror movie model, but not in the way it's done in The Purge. The box office success of this film could lead Universal to produce some spin offs. Hopefully they'll do more with this potentially expansive franchise than James DeMonaco.

Two out of five stars.

Now You See Me (Leterrier, 2013)

There's way too many characters, but the story of Now You See Me is almost fun enough not to notice. 

Set in the world of magicians, the film takes audiences on an amusing ride through various locations across the globe. It is not very original, but Now You See Me still manages to offer an entertaining non-action alternative for the summer movie season. It's fast-paced, energetic, and all around fun to watch.
Now You See Me tells the tale of four street magicians of varying talents, played decently by Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, and Dave Franco. These small-time tricksters and con artists are given a rare opportunity when they are chosen to work together on a new act. One year later, these Four Horseman put on a big show in Las Vegas- and steal several million Euros from a bank vault in Paris during their final act.

The FBI, working with Interpol, investigates this seemingly magical robbery that pits reluctant agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) against a famous magic debunker (Morgan Freeman), a rich financier of the Horseman (Michael Caine), and a mysterious Interpol agent (Melanie Laurent). Rhodes now has to figure out how four once insignificant magicians have stolen millions of dollars before they strike again.

The characters in Now You See Me are nothing more than mere plot devices; audiences know little to nothing about any of the multitude of criminals and cops that come their way. The heroes and villains (though it's never clear who the audience is supposed to root for) alike are uninteresting and pale stereotypes of unfamiliar people, leading to a disconnect from the viewer.

But, Now You See Me is indeed enjoyable to watch. The mystery is intriguing and the reveals are equally dramatic. The actors all do a fair job in their performances, though they do not have much to wrok with in the script. Director Louis Leterrier clearly emphasizes style over substance in a film that that shines when it's performing magic and falls when it's attempting melodrama.

The plot twist at the end is so strange that it transcends simple liking or disliking; it's simply too out-of-the-blue for the audience to even find value in it. While there are several pitfalls about the movie, most general audiences should fin it lighthearted mindless fun. The real magic trick however, would be making people sympathize with any of these empty characters. Look closely, because the harder you look, the more you will realize that there is nothing actually there.

Three out of five stars.

Flashback Friday: Star Trek (Abrams, 2009)

No one expected the Star Trek franchise to go anywhere. CBS aired the series as yet another sci-fi program, but even after years of cancellation, fans clung on to it like nothing before. Gene Roddenberry created a grand vision of what an optimistic future would look like, with humanity at the peak of it's technological and moral standards. But after a clunky fifth television series, and the critical and commercial failure of the tenth motion picture, Star Trek seemed doomed. However, when Paramount expressed interest in rebooting the film series, J.J. Abrams joined the team to direct the new movie. His creation was unlike any reboot ever done, taking the term, and the franchise itself, to a whole new level. The success of this movie led to a sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, which was just released in cinemas everywhere. To get viewers ready for the adventure, today on Flashback Friday we're reviewing 2009's Star Trek. 

The cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation reunited for a fourth and final film adventure called Star Trek: Nemesis. The movie's director, Stuart Baird, was unfamiliar with the franchise and was thus unprepared to adequately make the film. After this cinematic disaster, and the lack of approval for the TV show Star Trek: Enterprise, Paramount decided it was time for a reboot of the Star Trek series. 

They hired J.J. Abrams, a well-known sci-fi director who created the shows Lost and Alias, as well as the film Mission: Impossible 3. He sought to make a modernized version of Star Trek, with a younger, more popular cast to appeal to a wider audience. Abrams wanted this new film to appeal to all viewers, and all generations, regardless of whether or not they were already fans of the franchise. Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote the script, which toned down the amount of Star Trek lore in favor of a more accessible science fiction adventure. 

Star Trek tells the origin story of the crew of the original U.S.S. Enterprise, especially that of Captain James T. Kirk and Commander Spock. Viewers learn that Kirk was born in a shuttle that narrowly escapes it's ship's destruction, a ship that was attacked by time-traveling Romulans. Spock was bullied for his "handicap" of having a Vulcan father and human mother. Eventually, the two cross paths at Starfleet Academy, where they are rushed into action to face the Romulan threat. 

Casting-wise, Star Trek remains pure gold. Chris Pine plays Captain Kirk with the same rebelliousness and spirit of William Shatner. Zachary Quinto looks and acts like Leonard Nimoy (who also appeared in the film), yet with an added sense of vulnerability. Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, and John Cho are excellent as Uhura, Scotty, Chekov, and Sulu, respectively. Eric Bana plays probably the best villain Star Trek has seen in a while, and echoes the glory days of evil, the likes of which includes Khan, General Chang, and the Borg Queen. However, whoever casted Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy remains a genius; Urban nails every line, and steals every scene he is in, from his first appearance up until the film's final moments. 

J.J. Abrams and the screenwriters took the idea of a "reboot" and brought it one step further. Most reboots just take the same characters and retell the story in a different way, ignoring all the series history that came before it. Star Trek, on the other hand, keeps over forty years of franchise history alive but away. Because the plot involves time travel, Spock postulates that the future will never be the same, and that nothing can be predicted. He states that this Star Trek exists in an alternate universe, so everything still happened in the five series and ten movies that came before it, just in another timeline. This intelligent plot device keeps fans happy and makes way for an exciting future of the series. 

Michael Giacchino provides a majestic musical soundtrack, hinting at the original series' theme without blatantly copying it. Much like Giacchino's score, Star Trek alludes to some of the franchise's most iconic moments. Fans were impressed by the way the movie includes references to Captain Archer, Kirk's childhood, Uhura's mysterious first name, and the Kobayashi Maru. 

Star Trek is the film fans have been waiting for: a well made origin story that is both entertaining and fulfilling. It became the first Star Trek film to win an Oscar, for Best Makeup. The critical and commercial success of the movie led to a sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, in theaters everywhere today. The Star Trek franchise's future looks promising, and audiences around the world are excited to jump into warp once again to watch the voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise. 

"Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the U.S.S. Enterprise, her continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before."