Synecdoche, New York

Caden Cotard is a relatively successful theatre director, married to a
successful artist, with a young daughter. His health's not all that it might
be, and his marriage is a bit dead in the water. His life begins to spiral way
out of control, as he attempts to create a massively complex autobiographical
theatre piece, with a cast of thousands, recreating his entire life and
everyone that connects with him in a warehouse set.

Now, this is a film written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, writer of Being
John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, so it should be no
surprise that things take a rapid turn for the incredibly bizarre, dreamlike
and hallucinatory very quickly. Uncompromisingly so, in fact; not much that
happens in the second half makes a lick of sense, even though, ultimately, it's
quite justified. It's a deliberately confusing and occasionally disturbing bit
of cinema, but I would say completely worthwhile. Like some sort of odd cross
between Michel Gondry and David Lynch.

Obviously, when a film is largely dream sequence, it's all to easy for it to
disappear up its own arse. Synecdoche avoids this by being frequently highly
amusing, as things take absurd and whimsical turns all over the place, as
dreams are wont to do. So it's surreally amusing, surreally disturbing,
surreally melancholy... basically, all flavours of surreal in one big
surreality selection box. Very nice.

Still don't know how to pronounce it. Apparently it's not done that well at the
box office, and I wonder if, in part, that's because people have gone "I'll
have a ticket for sneck... sink.. sind... Wolverine please."

The Curious Origins Of Mr James "Wolverine" Logan Esq.

It seems that once in the mid nineteenth century there was a wee boy named
James Logan, and his half brother Victor Creed. One fateful night, they
discover they have Special Animal Powers, and then the credits happen. When the
credits end, it's the Vietnam War Or Something, and they get recruited into a
black-ops super-team.

And then things go pretty much by the numbers for a film in which there's a
black-ops team that does Very Bad Things, people grow consciences, fail to
grow consciences, betray each other, swear vengeance on each other, and stuff.

So, what it is, is a pretty slick and cool action revenge type flick, with
added shiny superpowers. Rather than, I would say, a dark gritty superhero
movie. Which means it's good stuff. Obviously, it's more of a thrill ride than
a story with depth, but judged as a thrill ride, it's absolutely worth the
price of admission.


8/10 - Doesn't do anything surprising, but what it does, it does well. Doesn't
really push for anything above or beyond what was expected of it.

Star Trek

Ooh. Eh. Hmmm.

The first thing we have to do is decide what this is. Then we have to work out
how good a one it is.

Is it a sci-fi movie? Is this a story about a starship in an interstellar
peacekeeping federation? No. No it's not. It's an unashamed 124 minute fangasm.
This is a film made for people who like the original series. The intent seems
clear, to roll back the years, and remake the ludicrosity of the Shatner era.
We are having no truck with the TNG and subsequent series, where the
inhabitants of an interstellar cruise liner go places and be diplomatic at
people. This is phasers and fistfights.

As it goes, it's pretty successful. In that without the Star Trek marque on it,
this would all be pretty lame-ass stuff, but somehow, since it *is* Star Trek,
cheesy stupidity is part of the franchise, and they do a reasonable job of
capturing the formula - in a way that, for instance, 'Enterprise' really
didn't.

The plot is pretty standard Trek stuff; a bunch of Romulans from the future
have come back in time in order to trash the Vulcans and the Federation in
general, using their Way Superior Technology to cream the opposition. The only
notable thing about this is that in doing so they change Trek history, their
actions altering the characters at pretty formative points of their history,
thus ensuring that they can take a fresh take, rather than feel like they have
to copy.

It's also a superhero origins movie, in that it details how Kirk comes to
command the Enterprise, and assemble the classic crew. I don't think it'll come
as any great surprise to anyone that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I have one real issue with the film, and that's that they don't give Kirk a
whole lot of manly heroics. He gets beat up a lot. His primary ability seems to
be to soak up a beating until someone else arrives to save his ass. He's Kirk.
He ought to be able to beat up any five guys in a fistfight, with a trademark
overhead double hand blow. Everyone else, I like. I actually *like* Chris Pine
as Kirk. I just wish they'd managed to write him succeeding by more than basic
blind luck.