4 July - "A toast to the end of the world"

Independence Day (1996)

dir. Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow, 1996)

CAST
Will Smith (I Am Legend, 2007)
Jeff Goldblum (The Big Chill, 1983)
Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Randy Quaid (Brokeback Mountain, 2005)
Robert Loggia (Big, 1988)
Mary McDonnell (Donnie Darko, 2001)
Vivica A. Fox (Batman & Robin, 1997)
Margaret Colin (The Devil's Own, 1997)
James Rebhorn (Cold Mountain, 2003)
Harvey Fierstein (Mrs. Doubtfire, 1993)
Adam Baldwin (Serenity, 2005)
James Duval (The Doom Generation, 1995)
Lisa Jakub (The Beautician and the Beast, 1997)
Giuseppe Andrews (American History X, 1998)
Bill Smitrovich (Iron Man, 2008)
Mae Whitman (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, 2010)
Harry Connick Jr.  (New in Town, 2009)

Independence Day is not my favorite fourth of July movie (that would be this one) but it is still a pretty good one. I think we can all agree that the best scene is when the dog leaps out of the way of the explosion, and that it is very inspiring when Bill Pullman tells us that the fourth of the July will no longer be an American holiday, but a day when the whole world will celebrate it's Independence Day (that's the eponymous moment).

24 May - "He'd let you die."

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

dir. J.J. Abrams  (Super 8, 2011)

CAST
Chris Pine (Carriers, 2009)
Zachary Quinto (Star Trek, 2009)
Zoe Saldana (Burning Palms, 2010)
Karl Urban (Priest, 2011)
Benedict Cumberbatch (War Horse, 2011)
Anton Yelchin (The Beaver, 2011)
Bruce Greenwood (Double Jeopardy, 1999)
Simon Pegg (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 2010)
John Cho (Total Recall, 2012)
Joseph Gatt (Thor, 2011)
Tony Guma (Mission: Impossible III, 2006)

I saw Star Trek 2 on a rainy day in Rome, New York, with my friends from the the 2013 Tuscarora Migration Project as we took a hiatus from kayaking due to inclement weather conditions on Oneida Lake. It was probably the perfect movie to see under such conditions.

Since Star Trek already established our characters back in 2009, now we have the luxury of jumping straight into plot and conflict. Just to be safe, however, the movie opens at a breakneck pace with Kirk and Spock racing like devils through a white-red-yellow alien landscape, being chased by mud-daubed alien primitives. It was a great homage to something that might have happened in so many original series episodes. It also served the purpose of re-establishing our characters, Spock is logical to a fault, Kirk flies by the seat of his pants, and everyone else is just tagging along for the ride.

Unfortunately, we also had to sit through the "development" of Spock and Uhura's romantic relationship, which used Spock's self-sacrifice in the first scene to spin off a whole sub-plot of Uhura and Spock passive-aggressive infighting. This was tedious and otherwise irrelevant to the plot.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Khan, a genetically-modified superhuman based on the DNA of Ghengis Khan, historical badass. They don't mention that in the movie but they say so in the TV series when the Khan character is first introduced. Our heroes also have to deal with the war-mongering head of Starfleet Command, and in all other ways to save the day.

Problems:

I'm hoping that when Spock Prime (Leonard Nimoy's reprisal of future-Spock) referred to Spock defeating Khan only at "a great price," he was alluding to the next sequel, because all in all, it was not very difficult to defeat Khan.

Uh-oh, Dr. McCoy used Khan's blood to cure Kirk's severe radiation poisoning. This means the laws of death no longer apply and it's going to create a slew of plot holes in the future.

11 Dec - "All the way to the top is the safest place"

Skyline (2010)

dir. Cloin Strause, Greg Strause

CAST
Eric Balfour (America's Sweethearts, 2001)
Scottie Thompson (Star Trek, 2009)
Brittany Daniel (Joe Dirt, 2001)
David Zayas (The Interpreter, 2005)
Donald Faison (Uptown Girls, 2003)
Tanya Newbould (Cyrus, 2010)

Unfortunately, this alien invasion movie brought alarmingly little to the genre. In fact, so much money was invested in the special effects in the last 30 minutes, all that could be managed in the previous hour were our five vapid and charmless protagonists hanging out in their penthouse acting scared and fighting about whether they should go outside. Given that so little time was given to the rising action, you'd think we might at least get some character development, but that was unforthcoming as well. The only intriguing part of this movie was the absolutely last scene, in which the male lead becomes some sort of alien-human cyborg monster but, unlike all the other alien-human cyborg monsters, he retains his own mental agency, and so he crouches protectively over his woman and then it's over.

28 Sept - "One man alone cannot fight the future"

X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)
dir. Rob Bowman (Elektra, 2005)

CAST
David Duchovny (Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, 1991)
Gillian Anderson (The Last King of Scotland, 2006)
Martin Landau (City of Ember, 2008)
Mitch Pileggi (It's Pat, 1994)
Blythe Danner (1776, 1972)
Terry O'Quinn (Young Guns, 1988)
Armin Mueller-Stahl (Eastern Promises, 2007)
Lucas Black (All the Pretty Horses, 2000)
Michael Shamus Wiles (Conspiracy Theory, 1997)
Jeffrey DeMunn (The Green Mile, 1999)
Tom Woodruff (Hollow Man, 2000)
John Neville (The Fifth Element, 1997)
Gary Grubbs (JFK, 1991)
Steve Rankin (Men in Black, 1997)
Michael Krawic (Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, & Blonde, 2003)
William B. Davis (Behemoth, TV 2011)

The first X-files movie fits in between the fifth and sixth seasons, so in my quest to complete the complete 9 season series, this was a critical step. When we last left our heroes, the sinister Syndicate had conspired to destroy the X-files and put a stop to Agents Mulder and Scully's quest to uncover the truth about a vast government conspiracy against the American people. The concerns mostly a particular part of the show's mythic arc that I've been having trouble with. You see, there's this stuff called "Black oil," because that's what it looks like, which infects a human body in order to control it. This has something to do with an impending alien colonization and Russian and the U.S. are in a biological arms race to create a vaccine. Until the virus mutates and starts feeding off of human bodies in order to gestate big ol' alien monsters (Alien- style) that pop out of their tummies. The movie also goes deeper into the projects with bees that have been broached in the show, but while when bees on the TV show were carrying a variation of the smallpox virus, in the movie they infect Agent Scully with some sort of alien virus. Much like the show's story arc where Mulder has to race to deliver the cure for Scully's brain cancer, Mulder has to race in order to deliver the cure for this new biological foe. Which reminds us all of how scary viruses really are, as expressed by movies like The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak, or that new one I haven't seen yet, Contagion (plus any zombie movie post-28 Days Later).

The ending is rather inconclusive, and segues directly into season 6 of the TV show. All in all, the movie achieved more plot development than would be possible in any single episode, but we are left with little expansion into the greater mythology than the introduction of non-human beings who feed upon humans. One of the greater questions raised in the program is whether there are, indeed, actual extraterrestrials, or whether the government has some even more sinister agenda. At this point, I think the aliens are pretty clear, but what their intentions are, and what the intentions of the Syndicate are, have yet to be answered.

Does this mean that I'm a nerd?

4 Aug - "I don't know much about boats, but I would say that one's upside down."

Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
dir. Jon Favreau (Elf, 2003)

CAST

Daniel Craig (Elizabeth, 1998)

Harrison Ford (Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, 1977)

Olivia Wilde

Sam Rockwell (The Assassination of James James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007)

Clancy Brown (The Burrowers, 1986)

Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, 2006)

Chris Browning (3:10 to Yuma, 2007)

Adam Beach (Smoke Signals, 1998)

Ana de la Reguera (Nacho Libre, 2006)

Noah Ringer (The Last Airbender, 2010)

Toby Huss (Vegas Vacation, 1997)

Walton Goggins (Shanghai Noon, 2000)

David O'Hara (Braveheart, 1995)

Raoul Trujillo (Black Robe, 1991)

David Midthunder (The Burrowers, 1986)
Charlene Adams

One thing that I decided during this movie is that Sam Rockwell has got to be my #1 actor crush, which seems silly when there's a whole bevy of Adonises to choose from but, Lord help me, I've got a thing for character actors and Sam Rockwell always plays that clueless and sort of sleazy guy and it just kills me. I'm silly.

On the point, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Cowboys & Aliens, but it also failed to meet many of my expectations, and to be sure I had a lot of expectations going into this movie.

My first thought was that the core concept was very clever, because western films encapsulate the idealized values of the perfect American citizen. Independent, hardworking, honorable, etc. I firmly believe that in our (white American) hearts, we all desperately want to be cowboys because it represents a human of higher quality than we see ourselves to be (City Slickers in particular made a profit off this theme). Alien movies, on the other hand, are about xenophobia, protecting the interior from frightening and strange external forces and entities. Who better to protect America from scary aliens than the ideal American everyman/hero?

To this effect, I expected Cowboys & Aliens to use more of the motifs and thematic elements typical of the traditional western narrative. There was some of that: the decaying mining town, the impotence of official law enforcement, but this was also a very modern movie, especially in the development of relationships.

I was reading some internet articles about the movie and I have to say that they made some good points. The first thing is that the pairing of Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig should have overwhelmed us with the glorious union of their manliness, but the dynamic between the two actors fizzled. They didn't actually share very much screentime. They didn't work well together, and what should have been a friendship didn't really feel very fraternal at all. Big fail on that.

Also, I don't think Olivia Wilde's character should have been in the movie. Her presence as a love interest was unnecessary, and detracted from the emotional weight of Jake's wife's death via abduction, which was actually a very disturbing scene. Wilde's brief backstory was outlandish (in a science-ficiton movie, no less) and I don't really need to know where the aliens came from or why they are on Earth or why they are kidnapping and killing humans (to learn our weaknesses? Really? We are soft meaty bodies. Is it necessary to know more than one way to skin a cat?)

Part of the advantage of the old west setting should be that the audience can engage in the bafflement of the characters. Bright lights? Flying machines?? Are they demons?

On the other hand, old time people had to confront insane levels of novelty all of the time. What if you just saw a giant anteater walking around one day, and nothing you had ever experienced you before had prepared you for the experience. They are crazy looking and you would just have to deal with that. You want to know why old timey people believed in monsters? It's because they saw monsters all of the time.

So I think that Jake Lonergan and Corporal Dolarhyde would be a lot less interested in learning about who the aliens are and what they want, than figuring out where they live and how to kill them. I think we would have been better served with a little mystery than a naked Olivia Wilde explaining how she took human on this planet to make certain the invaders would not destroy the earth as well.

24 July - "Oh-llo?"

Megamind (2010)

dir. Tom McGrath (Madagascar, 2005)

voices

Will Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction, 2006)

Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading, 2008)

Tina Fey (Ponyo (voice), 2008)

Jonah Hill (Strange Wilderness, 2008)

David Cross (Small Soldiers, 1998)

Ben Stiller (The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001)

J.K. Simmons (Burn After Reading, 2008)

A couple things come to mind when I'm thinking about how to start this one. The first is that I really just don't care for these chintzy computer-animated movies with the bright colors and the vomitingly (I made that an adverb) predictable ending and the complete and utter lack of charm.

I guess it was like, six or eight months ago when a fella asked me if I wanted to see this with him. I like it when someone asking me out has already picked the movie (or whatever the plan is, since a friend of mine told me that movie as a first date is bullshit because you're supposed to be engaging with each other) - but if we are going to see a movie I like it when the guy has already chosen one because it seems lazy otherwise. As if, hey I want to hang out with you, can you organize an interesting and fun evening? No, I say, if you want my company so bad, you gotta do the legwork.

Anyway, so my normal M.O. is to agree to whatever movie my prospective suitors suggest, because at that point I'm more interested in the person than the movie (a surprising confession, I know. This is why I ended up seeing Superman Returns TWICE in the theaters! But I still think the worst date movie I ever sat through was Enchanted, which ended up being quite pleasant when I watched it later on DVD with some girlfriends, so yeah, I think the company you've got during a movie is important)

I am having a hard time getting to the point. The point is that even though it usually doesn't matter to me what movie a guy picks, and even though I hate picking date movies, and even though I really liked this guy and wanted to go out with him, I was still like, Hells no, I don't wanna see Megamind, I will call you back in 20 minutes with a revised itinerary. We ended up seeing It's Kind of a Funny Story instead; it was a rather arid week for cinema in Athens, but I thought it was a reasonably good choice. It didn't work out, though, c'est la vie.

So I watched it because I wanted to watch something On Demand with my lil bro, we also saw Tangled (upcoming!) and we may resort to Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. It was fun with him because we laughed at the funny jokes, but, honestly, this movie was artless, it wasn't cute at all, it was pandering and easy and heavy-heavy and clumsy, like someone who's trying too hard to be your new best friend and I just wanted to be alone after the whole confrontation.

My brain is all over the place right now. Still sick in bed, by the by.

Trailer!

Cowboys and Aliens

This is a great idea! First of all - why do aliens always have to attacking in the present or the future? As my fella' keeps telling me, the History channel makes a pretty convincing argument that they wreaked some extraterrestrial shenanigans in the past as well (of course, only in exotic places like Mexico and Egypt, everything white folks ever made was solely by virtue of their advanced intellects and ingenuity).

Alien movies are metaphors about xenophobia, right? And cowboy movies are the most important metaphors of all - because they're generally about those critical American value of individuality and freedom (and vigilantism?). So I guess that a movie about ETs in the old west is trying to tell us that the terrorists and the illegal immigrants aren't just after our awesome land and democracy, but the very nature of the American Spirit. Dammit. They're after our IDENTITY!

So I was trying to think about if Harrison Ford had ever been in a western, because I haven't seen one. Some light internet research came up with A Time for Killing (1967), which is not on Netflix but wikipedia tells me it's about a group of Confederate soldiers who escape from a Union prison and are running for the Mexican border (I'd head back to Georgia, but fine.) The other one is the Gene Wilder Classic, The Frisco Kid (1979). So I guess it's been a while since Ford exchanged the Fedora for a Stetson (see what I did there!?)

So this comes out next summer and I'm already quite pumped up about it.