Tron Legacy

Full disclosure:  I don't really remember the original Tron.  I was eight years old when it was released in 1982, and I remember that it looked really cool and that I really wanted to see it, but I never got there (ET, on the other hand, I saw three times that summer).  I finally got to check it out when it aired on HBO, but even by then the special effects looked pretty cheesy and I remember being so bored by it that I don't think I ever made it through the entire movie, and I haven't tried watching it again since.

Regardless, I did check out Tron Legacy in IMAX/3D, since, like its predecessor, it still did look really cool.  And the visuals were, particularly the lightcycles and the arena games where the 3D looked amazing. Unfortunately, I wish I could say the same for the story.  I figured since Disney seems to have hidden the DVD of the original film into some sort of home video witness protection program (the last release was in 2002 and it's gone MIA on Netflix) that it wouldn't matter that I hadn't seen the first movie in a long time.   Either it did matter or the story was just so lackluster that it just wasn't interesting enough to follow.

Tron Legacy is the story of Sam Flynn (Garrett Hedlund), the son of Tron's genius video game designer Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).  Essentially orphaned after his father disappeared some 20 years earlier, Sam follows a mysterious page to his dad's old arcade one night and winds up being swept away into The Grid, a virtual world created by his father.  There, he's not only reunited with his long-lost dad, but he also confronts Clu (also Jeff Bridges) his father's genocidal virtual double gone bad, and Quorra (Olivia Wilde) a sentient computer program that Kevin has been protecting from Clu, who's planning to escape with all of his virtual badness through a portal into the real world.

Again, the special effects are really terrific.  When Sam first arrives in The Grid, he's captured and forced to participate in these gladiator-type games in a huge virtual arena.  It's one of the best sequences in the film, and if that had been the story and there had been more scenes like that I probably would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.  That stuff was much more fun.  Once Sam escapes off-Grid with Quorra it just became a not-particularly interesting sci-fi movie.  And I hate boring sci-fi.  It was great to see Jeff Bridges in the dual role as Kevin Flynn and de-aged to his 1982 self as Clu (although in a few shots he looked too much like a Polar Express character), but most of his scenes kept reminding me how much more excited I was for True Grit instead of this.  It was also nice to see Bruce Boxleitner reprise his role as Tron, but his character seemed totally shoehorned into the story.

It's a perfect movie for a 3D junkie (and I enjoy 3D when it's done right), but like the first movie, it suffers mostly from a lot of wasted potential.  Great visuals, but couldn't they have spent some of that budget on a better story?

Tangled

Oh, Disney.  You can take the princess out of the title, but you can't take the princess out of the movie.  Despite their best efforts to make their 50th animated feature, Tangled, look a little less girly to moviegoers after the disappointing box office of last year's The Princess and the Frog, they still made a film starring a princess that also includes an evil witch, the prerequisite animal sidekicks, and a handsome prince to save the day.  And it's got songs.  Lots of songs.

Tangled is the story of Rapunzel (voiced by Mandy Moore), the princess with the impossibly long golden hair who was stolen as an infant by the evil Mother Goethel (Donna Murphy), who needs the magical properties of Rapunzel's hair to stay forever young and beautiful.  Isolated in a lonely tower in the middle of the woods from which she is never allowed to leave, Rapunzel's chance of escape comes in the form of Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi), a thief on the run who takes refuge in the tower.  After clobbering Flynn with a frying pan (everyone's weapon of choice throughout the film), Rapunzel promises to return the crown he'd just stolen from the palace if he promises to take her to see the yearly lantern festival that up until now she has only been able to see from her tower window.  Flynn reluctantly agrees, and from there adventure and an unlikely love story ensues.

As far as princess movies go, I didn't think Tangled was quite as good as The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast.  In fact, I think I liked The Princess and the Frog a little better.  The story didn't seem as strong as their earlier films.  But it's still a lot of fun.  The CG animation was beautiful, and it's got some really funny moments, my favorite being Maximus, the horse who chases after Flynn for most of the movie.  He doesn't speak, but his facial expressions are hilarious.  And it gets a little sad when you meet Rapunzel's heartbroken long-lost parents, which I wasn't expecting, but it's very well done.

Now I love musicals, so it was nice to hear some new Alan Menken songs (who composed the score with lyricist Glenn Slater).  We got a great new villian song, a really funny bar song, as well as "I See the Light," a terrific new duet between Rapunzel and Flynn.  And props to Zachary Levi - Chuck can sing!

I saw Tangled in 3D, but don't fall for it...it's nice but it added nothing to the film.  You're perfectly fine seeing it in 2D and you won't miss a thing if you do. 

Whether you like it or not, Tangled is most definitely a princess film and it's girly as all hell.  But that's definitely not a bad thing, and it still manages to be a good movie anyway.

Black Swan

Leave it to Darren Aronofsky to take a story about an insecure ballerina and turn it into a trippy hellish nightmare.  But then again, that's why we love Darren Aronofsky. 

In Black Swan, Natalie Portman stars as Nina, a ballet dancer about to make her debut in the lead role of the Swan Queen in a Lincoln Center production of Swan Lake.  Unfortunately this puts her in the awkward position of having to replace Beth (Winona Ryder), the former prima ballerina of the company who's basically been pushed out of the job due to her age and isn't happy about it, as well as having to fight off the inevitable advances of her director (Vincent Cassel).

Nina also suffers from a tremendous lack of confidence.  While she's a terrific dancer, talented enough to bring the grace and beauty required to play White Swan part of the role, she lacks the sensuality and devilishness needed to pull off the Black Swan role, much to the chagrin of her director and castmates.  Bring in Lily (Mila Kunis), the new dancer who befriends Nina but also seems ready to steal away her part in the show, and we've got a ballerina on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

This movie is all about Natalie Portman, who's in virtually every shot of this film, and she's incredible.  I'll be amazed if she doesn't win an Oscar for this (not shocked, of course...I still haven't forgotten what they did to Mickey Rourke for The Wrestler).  Nina seems emotionally unstable from the start - from her insecurities as a dancer to dealing with her overprotective mother (Barbara Hershey), so her breakdown as the movie goes on, which we see entirely from her point of view, is downright terrifying.  It seemed to be channeling a combination of the "they're all going to laugh at you!" moments from Carrie and even a bit of Norma Desmond's walk down the staircase in Sunset Blvd by the time we reach the finale, and she was just amazing.  I can't say enough good things about her performance in this film.

The visuals are typical Aronfsky:  freaky as hell, but fabulous, with another brilliant Clint Mansell score.  Plus you also get parts of the Swan Lake score, which is a thing of beauty itself.  If you're a fan (which I am, The Fountain being a criminally underappreciated favorite), you won't be disappointed.  It's a fairly simple story, but the movie itself is a total descent into madness, and it absolutely shouldn't be missed.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

We are a long way from Hogwarts, kids.  In this first part of the Harry Potter finale (Part II arrives in theaters next summer), we are in the midst of a wizarding war.  The Ministry of Magic has fallen to Voldemort's Death Eaters, who are persecuting anyone with a drop of Muggle blood in their veins, Albus Dumbledore is dead, and literally no one - wizards and Muggles alike - is safe. 

Harry Potter has been in danger in some form or another ever since his first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but now the stakes have never been higher.  On the run and isolated from everyone who's protected him in the past, Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione are searching for Horcruxes - magical objects containing pieces of Voldemort's soul.  Voldemort cannot be killed until the Horcruxes are destroyed, but the trio have no idea where these Horcruxes might be.  Or how to destroy them once they are found.  Tensions run high and friendships are tested while they scour the English countryside on this seemingly hopeless mission, the fate of the wizarding world resting on their very young and very frightened shoulders.

Whether or not it was wise to split Deathly Hallows into two parts (this is the first of JK Rowling's phone-book sized novels to be made into two films), as a fan of the books I would have to say yes, simply because Part 1 was probably the most faithful adapation of the series so far.  Director David Yates took the trio's dangerous yet directionless Horcrux quest, which tended to lag in the first half of the book, into the Empire Strikes Back of the Harry Potter films.  It was great.

Beautifully shot by Eduardo Serra, and brilliantly acted by Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint, who absolutely shine in this film, you're never made to feel that this two-part finale was simply a Warner Bros cash-grab, which it undoubtedly also was.  It perfectly captured the all-bets-are-off feeling that the book had, where no character seemed safe - in fact, two of them are killed off within the first fifteen minutes of the film - and there was no limit to the amount of horrors that could happen, making this easily the scariest film in the series as well. 

The downside of the split is that even at a 2-1/2 hour running time, it still only feels like half a film.  Even knowing when the split would be going in, the ending was incredibly abrupt.  It was also strange not seeing Hogwarts and some of the familiar characters from the previous films, although a few do make some welcome brief appearances (and we can't wait for your moment of glory in Part II, Neville Longbottom!).  They also have the issue of re-introducing a few characters who haven't been heard from since the earlier films who play an important role in the finale.  Hell, Ron's brother Bill not only makes his film debut, he also quickly needs to explain the werewolf bite scars he has from a sequence that was left out of the Half-Blood Prince film entirely.  

It's hard to gripe about anything that was left out, since we can't be sure it's not being saved for the next film.  I can say that having now seen how certain death scenes were handled in Part 1, I can't even begin to imagine how they're going to handle the emotional wreckage that is Part II. 

Now if you haven't seen the previous films or read any of the books, I'm not sure I'd recommend this film as good starting point (and why the hell would you be starting with this film anyway?).  I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows a few weeks ago and I watched Half-Blood Prince again last night, and even my head was spinning a little trying to keep track of all of the characters, spells, and places whooshing by in this movie.  But if you are fan, then you need to see it, and get ready for next summer, because Harry Potter is going to be getting one hell of sendoff.

Unstoppable

Insipired by true events, namely a 2001 incident during which an unmanned CSX freight train carrying hazardous material sped off on a 66-mile joyride through Ohio, Unstoppable is director Tony Scott's second action film involving a train in less than two years (The Taking of Pelham 123 being the first).  And it's a pretty solidly entertaining action film.  It's a bit like Speed on a train.

The story basically follows the incident that inspired it, only with a lot more danger involved.  A freight train gets away from a careless engineer (we don't need no stinkin' airbrakes!) who hops out of the cab to flip a switch and promptly takes off at speeds of 75mph through the rural Pennsylvania countryside.  Along the way, there's a train filled with schoolkids on field trip, hairpin turns through populated towns conveniently located near giant fuel tanks, the jackass who thinks railroad crossings don't apply to him, and the usual corporate d-bags who chime in from the golf course to veto all sensible ways of stopping the thing because it causes some real damage.

Luckily we have Denzel Washington and Chris Pine around to save the day.  They play engingeers batting a not-particularly-interesting old guy/young guy argument around while driving their own train (the drama with Pine's character seemed more implausible than some of the half-assed attempts made to stop the train), but luckily that takes a backseat once they go after the runaway train.  The two of them work well together, and even though their characters are somewhat flat.  Rosario Dawson was also fun to watch as the no-nonsense dispatcher who seems to be the only one who can comprehend what's going on.

I know nothing about trains, but my dad, who's a train maniac, had a lot of fun after the movie pointing out all of the technical inaccuracies, so don't go looking for any of that.  But as an action movie, it's a lot of fun (my dad loved it anyway), especially the last half-hour or so, which is basically a big train chase with people leaping between two different locomotives at breakneck speed.  That was pretty cool. 

If you're looking for an intense character-driven story, this probably isn't it (although the performances were certainly good enough).  But if you're looking for a decent action movie, this is definitely worth checking out.