Back to the Future Trilogy

Back to the Future
Year: 1986
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Back to the Future, Part II
Year: 1989
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Back to the Future, Part III
Year: 1990
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Starring:
Michael J. Fox
Christopher Lloyd
Crispin Glover
Lea Thompson
Thomas F. Wilson
James Tolkan
and Mary Steenburgen

Though I watched this trilogy a couple of weekends back, I can still write this post as nearly every frame of these three films are ingrained in my mind. As a child, I watched movies. A lot of movies. This trilogy, at one point, was up for my favorite movies of all time (in a tight race with Ghostbusters for sure). There were a lot of nights where I would lie awake and imagine myself in a Marty McFly-esque predicament and one way to fix things was to hop in a supped-up car and hit 88 mph to travel to the past or the future. I still think about time travel, its potential, its pitfalls, and what opportunities I would take if given the opportunity. But I digress.

The films hold up well, not only because I loved them once, but because they are structurally sound. They were popcorn films but forced the audience to pay attention and not switch off their brains for a couple of hours. It’s this level of nerd-like detail and love that has inspired science-fiction comedies ever since, including the just-ended Futurama, which is the only example in the genre that comes close to its attention to detail. But the stories are engaging, the characters are well-drawn and well-acted, and the action is just the icing on the cake. It is, at its heart, an 80s movie, but it sets itself apart thanks to the efforts of filmmakers who held themselves to a higher standard.

Most Valuable Actor: It’s easy to put Michael J. Fox in this slot since he was the driver of the entire series, but I have always been partial to Christopher Lloyd’s character, Dr. Emmet Brown. Doc was a great character because he was part Einstein and part Jim Ignatowski, and those two characters could only be amalgamated by someone with the acting and comedic chops of Lloyd. He’s not a caricature, he’s not a buffoon, he’s an eccentric with good intentions and that is why he’s here.

Star Trek / Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek
Year: 2009
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Star Trek Into Darkness
Year: 2013
IMDB / Wikipedia / Trailer

Starring:
Chris Pine
Zachary Quinto
Zoe Saldana
Karl Urban
Bruce Greenwood
Simon Pegg
John Cho
Anton Yelchin
Eric Bana
Benedict Cumberbatch
and Leonard Nimoy

Directed by J.J. Abrams

In the time of reboots this franchise sets the standard. The first film paid it homage to the original series while striking out on its new, exciting journey that new Nerd King J.J. Abrams wants to take. For established fans (of which I count myself) the characters are familiar if only drawn with more detail. The stories are there, if only more exciting (a PG-13 rating on each helps with that), and all of the space adventure the science-fiction fan seeks is right where they left it. With its decidedly new slant on the original story with these established characters, why did I not feel like I was watching a Star Trek movie.

Probably because these both were action movies–very good action movies–starring the Enterprise crew. The original series of films were more of a thinking-person’s movie, forcing you into a battle of wits and not just photon torpedos. If you want to compare, watch Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (the overwhelming fan-favorite of the original series) and then watch the Abrams version, Into Darkness and notice the difference for yourself. Same characters, same villain with the same motives, but two films that couldn’t be more different. The original built on the suspense and wit that each character brought to it (including villains) while the newer ones, while feeling more organic, try and pack as much action into one film as there was in the six originals.

But, despite the action-packed pace of these newer films, I do have to say I like the character development better. With the old films, it was the Kirk and Spock show and everyone else was ancillary and expandable. In two films, Abrams has made us feel for every principle character (though Sulu’s part went MIA in the newest one) and the films are better for it. Sure, there are some character issues I don’t necessarily agree with but Abrams has made these characters flawed and his own, and that’s a gutsy move considering the fanbase. However, the products have spoken for themselves and these are two fine films, though they do not really fit in with the rest of the legacy.

Most Valuable Actor: As was clear in the latter original Star Trek films, Spock is a better character than Kirk because, despite being the definition of a static character, his is the only character that grows and changes throughout. Quinto’s portrayal of Spock expounds upon the character and the eternal struggle between his logical Vulcan side and his emotional human side.

Armageddon

Starring Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and Billy Bob Thornton
Directed by Michael Bay
Year: 1998
IMDB / Wikipedia

I could write this review without even watching the movie again. Before I knew what good cinema could be and what a hack Michael Bay is this film became “my favorite movie of all time” in the summer of 1998, prior to my senior year of high school. It almost seemed serendipitous: the biggest film of the summer, starring one of my favorite actors (Willis), and backed by a song sung by the band I was infatuated with (Aerosmith), it was perfect.

I saw the film a few times in the theater, once on a date, and I got goosebumps every time. Seventeen year-old Sean enjoyed explosions, space travel, characters talking very sternly toward one another, and the illusion of nudity that Michael Bay has perfected. When this movie hit VHS (God, I’m old) I bought it and almost wore it out with repeated viewings almost every day when I came home from school. It was an instant classic in my mind.

Now, I’m standing here writing this and the film hasn’t even started playing in my DVD player. the memories are so vivid I kind of want to just leave it at that and write this out. But that wouldn’t be fair to you, me, and the film. So I’m going to go watch it and see how this film has aged: well, like a fine cheese or badly, like milk.

151 minutes later … 

Well, it’s pretty much as I remembered. Bruce Willis is a grouchy yet lovable protagonist. Ben Affleck is begrudgingly amiable (don’t tell my wife I admitted that), the supporting cast is great, the script is crap, the special effects are amazing, and it left me walking a bit taller thinking that, just by watching this movie I somehow helped save the world in this fictitious alternate universe. Damn you, Michael Bay! *shakes fist*

As much as this movie stunk in the grand scheme of things I find I can still appreciate it for what it was: a Hollywood blockbuster that was heavy with laughs (Peter Stormare as the Cosmonaut still cracks my shit up) and explosions. Will it go down as a great action movie? Not really because the first two acts move pretty slow to build up the story. Will it go down as a great science-fiction movie? Probably not because of all of the macho posturing by the characters and the gross inaccuracies in the math (I wonder how Neil deGrasse Tyson would dissect this film). But i’s a fun ride.

Is the plot plausible? Of course not. Are the characters well drawn and believable? Not in the slightest (they all seem to be two-dimensional personalities). But it was a fun way to spend a Sunday evening. Now I feel like I need to read some James Joyce to counter-balance the amount of mind-numbing schlock I just witnessed.

Most Valuable Actor: It’s hard to argue with giving the nod to Billy Bob Thornton for this honor. The only actor in the lineup with Oscar-caliber acting chops, you wonder why in the hell he’s in this film in the first place. Well, instead of chewing the scenery like many other good actors would do, he injects life into his character making him someone who could truly walk off the screen and into real life. That’s an Oscar-worthy accomplishment for any Michael Bay film.

Trailer:

Chronicle

Starring Dane DeHaan, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan
Directed by Josh Trank
Year: 2012
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every now and then, I will find it necessary to break protocol to tend to my extremely large Netflix queue. This is one of those times.

I watched this almost a week ago and, though a good movie, it left me conflicted. Was this movie as good as I believed it was? Did it have a sleeper effect on me where I discovered something more while I dwelt on it? Was it really a good science-fiction effort or was I duped by a lot of flash?

Rarely, will I admit to being duped, and I’m not going to do it here. This film is a solid effort about three Seattle teens who find a mysterious object buried in the woods near a rave and they begin to develop telekinetic powers that grow as they learn how to control them. However, like with most stories that involve power that is bestowed upon a common person, the conflict comes in the balance between good and evil. The same holds here as the plot develops and climaxes in the classical way.

The thing that compelled me was how this generation would look at this conflict and how would it play out. There was little talk about responsibility, only about having fun. There wasn’t much discussion about consequences, only about what they could get for themselves. Looking at the generation portrayed in this film, I have a hard time believing that these three weren’t going out and using it to attract girls and get money. For that, I find it unrealistic.

However, what I did like was how the plot unrolled itself in a very organic way and how these characters were deeply flawed and vulnerable. When a film like this takes the time to weave the intricacies of parental abuse, humiliation, and the ongoing struggle that is being a teenager in America, it allows the genre to take some strange detours that make it a more realistic and more fulfilling experience.

One of the things I find to be disappointing is the whole “found footage” perspective as it wears really thin as the film progresses. I found it hard to suspend belief that a camera would be present in some of these situation and the perspectives were unrealistic. The filmmakers tried to explain it away by allowing Alex (DeHaan) to show how he can make his own camera and every other camera float in a jib-type way to gain more perspective than a simple first-person perspective shot. In theory, it would have worked, but then there’s the entire movie ending that would be pretty much impossible to explain away using this thinking. It detracted from the satisfying (but predictable) ending, but not enough to let it lose flavor.

Most Valuable Actor: To take on the central character of Alex, Dane DeHaan had to go to some dark places that rarely get spotlighted in major Hollywood releases, but ring very true on many levels. The internal conflict between what he knows to be right and his want to rectify the troubles in his life create for a complex character that is probably better than this movie deserved.

Trailer:

Prometheus

Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, and Idris Elba
Directed by Ridley Scott
Year: 2012
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every now and then, I will find it necessary to break protocol to tend to my extremely large Netflix queue. This is one of those times. 

This movie had been rumored to be “in development” for about the past decade. But, much like James Cameron’s Avatar, Ridley Scott was waiting for movie technology to catch up and a script to be penned before he put this grand-scale science-fiction epic to celluloid. I was interested to see how this would pan out, a film that was a pseudo-prequel of the classic movie Alien, that was to explore much more.

In less than 100 years, scientists find pictographs all over Earth with similar symbols they determine is a star map pointing toward an extra-terrestrial visitor thousands of years ago. This theory evolves into the search for mankind’s beginnings as a journey is undertaken to visit the alien world to find some answers. What they find is much more than the scientists or the ship’s crew were expecting.

I hate to cut it short but I don’t want to spoil anything because the film is too interesting as it unfolds. There are elements that crossover to the Alien series, including the Weyland Corporation’s involvement and an android crew-person (Fassbender) that isn’t all that he seems.

But the central theme of the movie is asking the question, “If you could know the meaning or secret of life, would you want to know?” and the myriad of answers that follow. There are some who want to believe, some that are secure in their faith, and others that don’t care either way because that question is not a driving force in their lives. So, as much as this film wants to be a true horror prequel to one of the greatest films of all time, at its core is a very fascinating science-fiction angle that takes over and make the movie so much more than it would have been in another director’s hands.

Sure, this film has some scary parts and it does lead itself into the next films, but there are some incongruousness in the plot that leaves more questions than answers. I’m sure Ridley Scott did that on purpose to make the viewer try and answer those questions, but it’s very distracting. A huge question I had at the end is so big that to ask it here would be a very deep spoiler. This is a film that should be discussed, studied, and watched repeatedly to find the subtle meanings beneath the surface to find out if it is just a good movie or something much more.

Most Valuable Actor: Michael Fassbender as the android David plays a very peculiar part in that he sets the stage for Ian Holm’s and Lance Hendriksen’s characters in the next two films in the series. Treated as the outcast, it is shown that David may have his own agenda or simply an insatiable curiosity with his mortal counterparts that precipitate many of the conflicts in the film. Fassbender’s ability to play the role very small and simple gives it such depth and a subtle creepiness that it would be hard for anyone to match; only imitate. If he doesn’t get an Oscar nod for his performance this year I will be very surprised and saddened.

Trailer:

The Andromeda Strain

Starring: Arthur Hill, James Olson, and Kate Reid
Directed by Robert Wise
Year: 1971
IMDB / Wikipedia

One of the reasons Michael Crichton‘s books were so popular and so good was that they were rooted in reality. They used current events, real places, and sometimes real people to help tell the story. When I read The Andromeda Strain for the first time in middle school I was transfixed by how real it was; like I was reading a historical account rather than a novel. But, that’s what Crichton did and did so well. The events in his books were so profound because of their plausibility and their attention to detail. However, what made for a great book made for a lousy movie.

I’ll be the first to say that, by-and-large, movies based on books betray the source material and leave an empty husk of a story filled with violence, special effects, and bad acting. However, the reverse is not always a good thing. In this film, director Robert Wise saw to keep as close to the source content as possible which, unfortunately, led to a film that was more like a documentary than a science-fiction thriller.

The story is of a town in New Mexico whose population is wiped out after a satellite touches down with an unknown disease. The military is sent in to investigate and loses two of their own. After finding two survivors, it is up to a covert team of scientists to get to the bottom of things in a secret underground laboratory named Wildfire. The balance of the film (almost 100 minutes) is devoted to the meticulous scientific research and problem-solving tasks to find out what they’re dealing with.

It is as riveting as that last sentence made it seem.

If you’re a fan of people looking into microscopes, poring over data, and growing things in petri dishes then this is the film for you. The suspense and the danger is supposed to be concocted in your mind knowing that the organism can kill everything on Earth if it ever escapes the compound. But in a visual medium like this, where broad strokes are taken to tell the story, it is hard for the viewer to feel that pressure the way a reader does with the novel. By the time they find an answer it seems like an inevitability rather than a life-saving solution.

The redeeming factor of this film are the character interactions that, for the most part, stay pretty true to the book (so far as I can remember). None of the actors are A-list names but they do an adequate job of filling the shoes of pretty unremarkable people put into a perilous situation and allowing the character to surface organically. Nonetheless, this movie is a poor excuse for a thriller and would have been better left on the page. I have hope that the relatively recent TV mini-series did a better job despite taking  taking major detours from the source. I guess, just this once, an exception could be made.

Most Valuable Actor: Kate Reid as Dr. Ruth Leavitt is the only character with a pulse during this entire movie. Her dark humor and her emotion is polarizing with the rest of the characters but it also creates the standard against which every other character is tested. Reid did an outstanding job trying to breathe life into this film but, in the end it wasn’t enough.

Trailer:

Alien / Aliens

Alien
Starring Tom Skeritt, Sigourney Weaver, and Ian Holm
Directed by Ridley Scott
Year: 1979
IMDB / Wikipedia

Aliens
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Michael Biehn, and Bill Paxton
Directed by James Cameron
Year: 1986
IMDB / Wikipedia

Here we have a tale of two directors helming two very different, but connected, films.

On the one hand, we have Ridley Scott, master of cinema and subtlety that brings us a truly frightening science-fiction masterpiece. On the other, we have James Cameron, a brilliant director in his own right that brings a different kind of sci-fi to the audience to tell a similar story will a different focus. Both are brilliant artisans but the differences between the two are worth a study.

Alien is the story of a commercial starship that is called to answer a distress beacon on a random planet on their way home from a mission. What they find is a species that is poised to decimate the entire crew just to serve its own propagation agenda. It’s a very cut-and-dry story with a few very interesting wrinkles along the way to ground it, not only in reality, but also fulfill one of the staples of science-fiction: social commentary. How far would we go to acquire something unusual, potentially profitable, despite its lethal nature?

Aliens takes place 57 years after the first movie with a group of Space Marines return to the planet to find out what has happened to a colony of inhabitants. On the surface, Cameron’s sequel (which he penned) takes many of the same plot devices and structure from the original and places it in his sequel.  This, however, makes little difference because the end results are two very different movies.

Scott’s style in Alien is reminiscent of the style of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick (whose own sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey came out 11 years prior) in that the tension was built from the unknown and the darkness. There is very little dialogue in the film to reflect that, in real life, people do not normally try and fill every breath with some comment. Every aspect of the film, from the dialogue, to the blocking, to the use of visual effects is meticulously calculated and controlled by Scott to bring the audience one of the best all-around science-fiction stories every captured on celluloid.

Cameron, however, takes a different approach to the film in that, like his other movies, he leaves little to nothing to the imagination. Everything is out in front for review and dissection for the audience. Tension isn’t built by anticipation and the unknown in this film, but by plot twists and unfortunate circumstances. The fear and horror in this film is not done with subtlety, but with Stan Winston‘s amazing visual effects creatures. Also, Cameron is also a master of scale, meaning the title Aliens is not just signifying a sequel, but plurality as well. The more the merrier.

However, people my age, those brought up with big-budget blockbuster movies, believe that Cameron’s sequel is one of the few sequels that outshines the original. But when you watch the films side-by-side, see the similarities in plot, devices, twists, and even resolution, it is easy to see that the sequel is nothing more than a re-imagining of the original in the guise of a sequel. When both films are seen for what they are, and what they could have been, a clear winner stands out.

Most Valuable Actors: The Synthetics, played by Ian Holm and Lance Hendriksen. Each role is essential for the plots in both films but for very different reasons. Holm’s roles was one of indifferent recovery and following orders, even if it meant the lives of every person on board the ship. Hendriksen, however, played his character differently, as if his goal was to make up for the sins of an older model or, at the very least, prove to Ripley that she could trust Synthetics. In both cases, each actor brought their own cold personas to the role making them perfect to play unfeeling machines.

Trailer (Alien)

Trailer (Aliens)

AI: Artificial Intelligence

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Year: 2001
IMDB / Wikipedia

There’s a reason I watched this movie alone and it’s not because my wife is sick in bed. This is a hard movie to watch. It evokes some of the most primal love instincts you may have and the protagonist’s story is one of undying (albeit programmed) love. At times it’s almost too much to watch as David comes to grip with love, loss, and his quest to become a real boy that someone could love.

The movie is the story of a sentient robotic boy named David, who is a prototype designed to feel love in a familial sense. The story is, on the surface, a moral story about what exactly is life and whether love can be real if it is artificially implanted. I think this is where I get a bit choked up.

When we are born our parents love us because we came from them. However, the child does not understand love from the beginning. When we are very young we are programmed to be dependent on those around us and we learn certain behaviors that allow us to attain the things we need to survive. At the beginning, we are simply mimicking our parents’ behavior to survive and it comes off as love. It is not until we get a little older do we start to understand the family bond, the connection between parent and child, and really begin to love for more than just our survival. Children who do not have that sense of love from their parents usually grow up without a basis from which to feel or receive love because it is still too foreign to them. Those people are still just trying to survive by putting on an act.

In the movie, David (Osment) is programmed to be a child surrogate in a future where there are strict laws on reproduction. The family who has David has a son who is in a coma due to a serious illness and uses David to supplement their son until the day the son wakes from his illness and returns home. The couple sees David as a form of catharsis and cannot anticipate the sibling rivalry that ensues when the couple’s song returns home.

From there, the movie takes a very dark turn and addresses issues of abandonment, fear, prejudice, hatred, and redemption with the underlying motif of love. Each action in the movie, positive and negative, is motivated by some form of love. The abandonment is motivated by love because, if David is returned to the manufacturer he will be destroyed. The hatred is fueled by love because some people view robots as a means to wipe out the human race and, for love of the species, they feel the need to lash out. Spielberg has an extraordinary way to approach each of these subjects which is why the film’s visionary, the late Stanley Kubrick, asked Spielberg to helm this film even before his death.

The greater question of this film is something that is easy to answer on the onset but gets harder to answer as the events of the movie go by: could you ever love something that is programmed to love you back? Could you ever receive a David and live with it as it was your own child? Could you cope with having a child who never ate, slept, or showed any emotion other than love and occasional fear? Could you stand having a permanent child in your life that, while it doesn’t need resources to survive, is sapping your energy? No matter what your answer is prior ot the movie, there will be something in the film that will make you change your mind or, at the very least, give you a better understanding of the other side of the coin. That is what great science-fiction is meant to do–get you to ask questions that may not have an easy answer.

IMDB Trivia Tidbit: The movie was originally to be titled A.I., but after a survey it was revealed that too many people thought it was A1. The title was changed to A.I. Artificial Intelligence to prevent people from thinking it was about steak sauce. (Ed. Are you kidding me? People who think they make a movie about steak sauce are fucking idiots. Than again, if they are going to make a movie out of Battleship and a TV show out of Draw Something, I guess it’s a plausible. But still … ) 

Trailer:

The Abyss

Starring Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Michael Biehn          
Directed by James Cameron
Year: 1989
IMDB / Wikipedia

James Cameron has a love affair with the sea. If he wasn’t making movies, he’d be in The Calypso in place of Jacques Cousteau, exploring the wonders of the ocean. Even as a film director, he still manages to find time to design, build, and pilot a one-man submarine craft to the deepest depths of the ocean.

But he also knows how to tell a good story as well. In The Abyss, Cameron spins a tale of an underwater oil rig that is taken over by the Navy after a submarine goes down in the middle of the ocean. While protecting the sub’s precious cargo, the crew finds they are not alone on this planet and the next form of intelligent life does not come from the sky, but from the watery depths.

I have the privilege to own a copy of the special edition of the movie. This cut of the film is longer and, in my opinion, tells a more complete story and gives the viewer a little more background into the aliens, their power, and their role in the greater story. Without giving too much away, the special edition adds almost 30 minutes of footage to the movie and it tells a richer tale. There are some special edition or director’s cuts to movies that add nothing special or unique to their stories, let alone another level of thought and drama. There is an entire sequence that was restored that must have coust millions to produce and was left on the cutting room floor prior to the film’s theatrical release. I have a theory about why that was.

The special edition of the film elaborates and expounds on the international relations tension that the downed sub has caused. It is played off as Lt. Coffey’s (Biehn) cold war paranoia in the theatrical version, but in the special edition there seems to be some root justification for his actions (not just the deep pressure psychosis). Even the additional sequences with the aliens, there is a distinct political rhetoric in play that rivals the ending speech in Rocky IV. Though it is not as syrupy-sweet as that one, the message is clear. On the Wikipedia page (link above), there is talk that the movie was cut for length, ILM’s limitations, and a fear that audiences may not sit through the entire film. I want to call that bullshit because what was taken out was so blatantly political. I’m not calling cowardice, I’m just citing that everything cut had a slant on it that many not have sat well with a general audience. It’s an artistic choice that I am not able to exercise myself in the DVD menu when I choose the special edition over the theatrical one.

But James Cameron sure does know how to tell a story. I don’t know if there’s another writer/director (because he did write The Abyss, also) who can rival the talent and the fortitude that James Cameron possesses. He also knows how to find the right people to make the story work and come alive on screen. This movie will go down as his forgotten classic as it failed to make over a billion dollars at the box office, but it may be the finest film he has ever made.

Most Valuable Actor: Michael Biehn as Lt. Hiram Coffey. I have to admit, this role could have been played by anyone. However, this role also appears to be one that would allow an actor to play it his own way and make the character rather personal. I have to imagine a Bruce Willis type would have been more quiet and calculating while a Carl Weathers would have played it much like The Hulk. But Biehn’s character was more than a psychopath, he was scary. The fight scene with Ed Harris in the moon pool is one that still gets my heart racing because it doesn’t look staged and I keep thinking that Ed may not make it off set alive if it doesn’t turn out right. Truly remarkable acting by an underrated and underused actor.