'Star Trek Into Darkness (3D)' Review (dir. J.J. Abrams)

 Score: C-

In 2009, director J.J. Abrams was successful in making Star Trek alluring for the next generation (no pun intended) with a film reboot of the franchise. With his follow-up to that movie, 'Star Trek Into Darkness', the overall quality has been diluted down into a medial summer blockbuster that was seldom entertaining or engaging. In my mind, 'Star Trek Into Darkness' has made its mark as one of the most disappointing films so far this year, and misses its mark, by a substantial margin, as the great science fiction flick I was hoping for.

       In 'Into Darkness', the crew of The Enterprise is called into action after a terrorist attack on London, which leads them to chasing the perpetrator into deep space. The story follows a direct path and there aren't really any surprises along the way (except one reveal that seems rather pointless). I thought the story had a very unnatural flow, and it was way too fast-paced; I enjoy it much more when a story has the ability to take its time. The plot was not very engaging in the least, it was hard to get into and it was hard to care about what happened to the characters in the story.

All of the original cast returns this time around along with a few new additions. None of the performances are particularly standout, other than Benedict Cumberbatch who plays the villain, John Harrison, in this movie. He does offer one of the few improvents over the first film, as his villain is a large improvement over Eric Bana's Nero. I enjoyed Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the first movie, but here he portrays a very annoying and obnoxious character that it is very hard to care about. The actors have some chemistry here, but it is hard to recognize under all the clunkly dialogue.

    The screenplay was one of the film's weakest points, at times it was unintellegent and lazily written, and most of the dialogue between the charachters felt like pointless banter. Other parts of the script seemed like they were just put in to make time go by. The script also had a hard time generating emotional moments between the charachters, and all of the more "heartfelt" scenes felt forced.

Abram's directing job is a serious downgrade from the first movie; I feel like there were parts of the film that were rushed through just because he didn't feel like working on them. Abrams also wasn't able to build the tension in this film very well. There were no edge-of-your-seat moments that are essential for a film like this to work. The action scenes in this film all seemed sloppily put together. They were fun at times, but there were very unorganized, muddled, and paid little attention to detail.

       I think Abrams knows that people are going to go see this film regardless of what he does, so maybe he decided to kick back and take it easy for 'Into Darkness', or maybe he is just out of ideas, so he resorted to making such a formulaic Hollywood movie. I also know that he got the job for the Star Wars film during the making of this movie, so maybe he was sidetracked with is other projects. Whatever the case, I truly hope that he does not return to direct the third film.

The best thing about the movie was the visual effects, which are some of the best I've seen in any film to date. All of the textures, enviornments, explosions, and scenery looked absoluteley perfect. I can't think of a movie in years with visuals this amazing! The other technical aspects of the film that stuck out were the sound editing and mixing, which were perfectly done as well. I ended up seeing this movie in 3D, which was not worth it. There were a few cool 3D moments, but very little was actually done with the 3D.
     In the end, 'Star Trek Into Darkness' is a disappointing follow-up to a good movie. As I said there are some positive things in the film, but a lot of them are overshadowed by the negative elements. To some it may be worth checking out, but it is a film I would have a hard time recommending. Hopefully, this year's summer blockbusters will get better as the year progresses, but for now, I will just have to deal with the dissappointment of this film.

     







'Iron Man 3' Review (dir. Shane Black)

Score: ★★★★/★★★★★

 

Going in to 'Iron Man 3' I was expecting to sit down and watch an enjoyable comic book film, but I must say, the first act of this film almost shattered all hopes of that. The first act had poorly-written dialogue, two-dimensional characters, and almost every Hollywood cliché in the book. However, as soon as the second act started, the movie transformed into a fantastic comic book adaptation with a very involving story. From then on out it got better and better, until a disappointing and anti-climactic final fight, but even with some flawed moments, this is still one of Marvel's best films to date.

           'Iron Man 3' is directed by Shane Black, a large improvement over Jon Favreau (the director of the first two films, and also the actor that has played Happy Hogan in all three Iron Man movies), and (of course) features Robert Downey Jr. reprising the role of Tony Stark (Iron Man). The film picks up soon after 'The Avengers', and the events of that film are haunting Tony Stark, who is constantly having nightmares and panic attacks. Soon, he is threatened by a new villain, The Mandarin, who is planting bombs all over the United States. After one of Stark's friends is injured in a Mandarin attack, he returns as Iron Man to fight off the new villain.  

The plot and structure of the film are not paticullarly great, nor are they even that good. Some of the characters' motives can seem far-fetched, and some of the characters seem to have no real reason for behaving certain ways. There are several plot holes in the movie, but it would be futile going over them since they really don't affect whether or not I liked the film. The script is alright, nothing particularly special about it, when the screenplay takes a lighter tone it works better, but when it takes itself seriously it can go way over-the-top. I thought most of the humor in this movie worked quite well. Out of all the Iron Man films thus far, it was certainly the funniest.

        As for direction, like I previously said, this a huge improvement over the direction of the first two films, but again, it's nothing that special. Shane Black handles the action sequences very well, but the more emotional and intimate scenes scream mediocrity. In the previous films, I thought Favreau did a better job with the one-on-one character interactions, and did a less impressive job with the action sequences. The visual effects here are very impressive, the best I've seen in any movie this year besides 'Oblivion', especially one scene towards the end of the first act.

 

The performances are solid in this movie, the two best being Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s character in this one much more than I did in both 'The Avengers' or 'Iron Man 2' (I found him very tedious in bothe those films, due to an endless supply of one-liners), you get to care more about his character in this movie. I loved Ben Kingsley in the movie, however, I did not enjoy the villian, but I can't say why without spoilers. All three Iron Man movies have had very weak villians, especially 'Iron Man 2'. The other thing I would like to mention about this film was the editing, I thought it had some very bizarre transition shots that could get annoying. However, the cinematography, score, sound, performances, and direction were all good.

       This is not a perfect film, it has some very good moments, and it has some very weak moments, but in the end I'd say its positive qualities overshadow the negative ones. This movie is a lot of fun, I can say it is a huge improvement over 'The Avengers' and 'Iron Man 2', I would actually go as far as to say that this is my favorite Iron Man in the series by quite a bit. I'm glad this movie turned out the way it did, and I can't wait to see Iron Man return to the screen again. On a side note, please do not sit through the entirety of the credits to see the clip they play after it. You will be thoroughly disappointed.