Super 8 (2011)

*This review contains spoilers*

J.J. Abrams, the writer and director of the new summer blockbuster Super 8, should be praised for putting what is likely to be the only original movie this summer (meaning there is no prior existing source material or it is not a sequel). How disappointing, then, that this movie lacks the inspiration that audiences need in this day and age to remind them that good, original filmmaking is worth fighting for. That there can be a heart to a film, not just loud explosions throughout.

Abrams more or less succeeds at this noble goal in the first hour of the film, in which the only major action set pieces are a ridiculously huge train crash, and a scary gas station attack. It is in this first hour that we are introduced to the child cast, lead by Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) and auteur Charles (Riley Griffith). There are other various stereotypes that make up the group, including a pyromaniac and two anxious nerds. A love interest is introduced in the form of Alice (Elle Fanning), who agrees to act in the super 8 film these kids are making, and tender scenes between her and Joe abound. They really are well done.

But then the monster is introduced, and it is here that the movie unravels. The scenes where the monster attacks are well done and thrilling, but the film takes a complete 180 at the end as it is discovered this beast really just wants to go home. You can tell Abrams wants you to feel sorry for this creature, but after watching an hour of this thing viciously kill dozens of innocent people, the moment Joe and the beast have at the end borders on the ludicrous and as the movie imitates E.T.'s ending, you are filled with tears of disappointment for what this movie could have been.

Abrams effectively establishes his characters but seems to have no idea how to make their character arcs more organic. Both Joe and Alice have daddy issues which are neatly resolved inexplicably by the end. Things come to happy yet unsatisfying conclusion.

And the real problem is that damn monster, a stranded alien from outer space. Spielberg made aliens lovable and friendly with Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E.T. (1982), and Abrams clearly is modeling his film after both of these. Yet in Close Encounters people are abducted, but no one is harmed and everyone is returned safely at the end. And E.T. is as harmless as can be. I don't mind Abrams wanting to have the alien monster be a savage killer, but the creature needs to be introduced to us as more sympathetic then this movie's lousy excuse. King Kong shepherds Anne around the whole movie, never intending on harming her, and we see his gentle side and feel sympathy when the nasty humans take him. This monster doesn't even have a memorable design.

Abrams is a skilled director, but he's more a craftsman then an artist. Star Trek is essentially a lot of action scenes, and its a well done film, but it lacks heart. Super 8 sows the seeds of Abrams injecting real emotion into a story, but in the end, he's just a kid with a big budget looking to make his monster movie.

End note: stay for the end credits, the Super 8 film shown is better then the movie you just saw.

Inception (2010)

It's hard to really give a thorough description of what Inception is about, but here's the most basic ingredient to understanding how complex it is: Imagine the Matrix. Now imagine that there was a Matrix inside that Matrix. And possibly another one inside that one. You kind of get the head trip that Inception is about to take you on.

The movie concerns that which is most precious to movies: dreams. Movies realize our greatest dreams and greatest fantasies, and Inception is a movie to challenge all those notions. Here is the reason we go to the cinema: to see things we've never seen before, to experience thrills that we've never dreamed of. A Trip to the Moon was a modern marvel in 1902, and I'm happy to report that in a summer full of sequels, reboots, and whatever else, Christopher Nolan has delivered what could very well turn out to be his best movie.

I say could because I'm not sure of the movie's greatness yet. But it is a movie that, once over, immediately warrants a repeat viewing because you want to go back, knowing what you now know, and reconstruct the movie from there. Repeat viewings, as is true for all movies, test whether something is truly a masterpiece. For now, I will say Inception is one of the best of the year and maybe that opinion will change later on.

The movie is about a specialized group of people who steal ideas from other people's dreams. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, one of the best in this field, along with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I won't even begin trying to explain how this process, known as "extraction," exactly works, and I won't even delve too far into the concept of Inception except to say, it is the opposite of an extraction.

Marion Cotillard is also in this movie, as Leo's wife, and she has a stare that terrifies the shit out of you. There's also Ellen Page, who doesn't know how this stuff works and so serves as our entry point into the whole idea of the dream world. Her job is to construct the reality of the dream so that the subject doesn't realize there are other "dreamers" there.

Nolan, who is the sole writing credit on this one (usually his brother Jonathan collaborates, but this one was maybe to intricate for Nolan to lay out for him on paper), proves how adept he is at juggling multiple story lines. This movie is the perfect study of parallel editing over the course of an hour to build tension so high that you are about to burst at the seams with craziness just wanting it to all end.

Undoubtedly there will be several knockoffs of this film down the line, but we will weather them. People will try to be as brilliant as Nolan, but few if any will succeed. He is working on a whole new level, way ahead of the rest of his competition, and inventing the curve. Did I understand Inception? Yes. Can I explain it? Yes, but it would take far too much time to lay out, and honestly, you should just go see it. It's a movie that has to be experienced, it cannot simply be explained.

Avatar (2009)

It's nice to know that in this world there are still filmmakers who know how to make a solid action movie. Who know that an action movie isn't really about the action at all, but about the characters who carry out the actions. That Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) become completely identifiable and sympathetic in this movie is one of the only real reasons it works.

The film that took 12 years for Cameron to bring to us, Avatar, has certainly been analyzed as a Dances with Wolves, Smurfs, and Ferngully hybrid, and if you like boiling movie's plots down to essentially what they resemble, then this a fair assessment. But Cameron's picture succeeds because it takes what could have been a very silly story, and makes it believable. Sure, this movie is ridden with clichés, and every moment is predictable, but Cameron spends so much time painting the world of the Na'vi and their indigenous land that you fall for them as Jake Sully does.

The movie takes place some odd years in the future (it is never said, though keen eyed people probably picked up on the dates on video diary screens), where the natives of the planet Pandora reside upon a mineral source that is worth lots of money. So, naturally, corporate fat cats want to buy the land from the people and mine the shit out of that stuff. Problem is, the natives won't budge.

Sully is a paraplegic, and is assigned to Pandora when his brother is killed. A rather expensive avatar (Na'vi look-a-likes) was made for him, and since Sully shares the same Genome, he is the perfect money and time saving candidate for the job. Soon, he inhabits the Na'Vi's body and goes to learn about their people.

A lot of the characters in this movie are more caricature then character; Stephen Lang plays the evil Colonel, though really he is just doing his job. Giovanni Ribisi is the above mentioned fat cat, and Michelle Rodriguez plays the only soldier with enough of a conscious to decide killing innocent blue people is wrong. And on the Na'vi side there are the old, wise clan leaders and the hot head warrior that challenges the outsider.

But the movie stands above most other genre pictures because it marvels at the scenery and beauty that is surrounding them. 60% of the film is CGI, 40% live action, and you really can't tell the difference most of the time from scene to scene. The settings, the small creatures, and plants, trees and textures are so pain-stakingly detailed that they absorb you. The world of Pandora is unfolded to us as it is to Sully, and never overloads you with information.

I was skeptical of this movie, but by the time Sully tames a pterydactol thingy and flies through the air, I was sold on the movie and completely exhilarated. At that point, my brain took a backseat and I just drowned in the imagery and action at the end. I fought and fought the movie, and the movie deservedly one.

Maybe most surprising about this film is how patient it is. This is not an action heavy movie; there are few scenes at the beginning when local wildlife attack the naive Sully. But the Colonel doesn't roll out the artillery until the end, and the final action sequence is so epic it makes up for the "lack" of action and shooting earlier. Really, that is so rare for a movie these days to actually make its audience wait for the big battle at the end.

What's even more remarkable is that this movie is a blockbuster hit now, and is not based on anything concrete. Obviously it is an update of our genocide on the Native Americans way back when, but there is no comic book, novel, or anything else that this was based on. All the characters came from Cameron and his crew, and originality like that is about near impossible to find in Hollywood. Of course, the script could have been injected with a shot of originality too, but the creatures make up for that.

A note on the 3D in this picture: it is quite unlike what I have seen before. It doesn't call attention to itself and make things pop out of the screen to hit you. Instead, it just amplifies the scenery and creates more depth to what is going on. I've become less of a fan of 3D in the past year due to the insane amount of films that come out in the format, but here, the 3D doesn't drive the movie, it only serves to enhance everything. That being said, I also saw this in IMAX, and was quite confused as to why the image didn't fill the screen; I expected bars on top and bottom, but there were also pillars on the sides, so the image didn't stretch across the whole screen. Was it like that at other IMAXes? (and I mean real IMAX, not bullshit new IMAX).

This movie has set the bar pretty high in terms of photorealistic CGI; I've never seen anything so convincing, and wonder when the time will come that a whole movie will be created that is completely CGI, without actors (just voices), that is totally convincing. I honestly hope this never happens; CGI can't replace flesh, and Cameron wisely keeps the real actors in live action scenes instead of replacing them. Cameron and Peter Jackson know that CGI should only be used to enhance your movie, not drive it, and filmmakers like Michael Bay and George Lucas believe that computers can do everything.

I hope Cameron doesn't take another 12 years to make another movie; though he knows how to utilize CGI, he also lets the script for the most part take a back seat to it. But this is a smart movie; it doesn't say anything new, but it reiterates what we know, and there is a certain poignancy in watching a line of humans being marched onto a space ship and sent back home, defeated, in the end. "They killed their mother," one spiritually in-touch character says. It's a kick-in-the-pants reminder that we can't continue winning forever, and that eventually, the human race will lose.