Star Trek Into Darkness (J.J. Abrams, 2013)

I've given J.J. Abrams positive write-ups in the past, but Star Trek Into Darkness is one oversimplification too far. It is not a reimagining of Trek but an un-imagining of it, reducing a naïve, flawed work that nevertheless advanced a unique and idealistic view into a work of cynical fan service by people who clearly could not care less for what Star Trek is. Some might interpret that as irritation that this movie does not simply ape past installments (though in many ways it does, and its cover-up of Khan's identity suggests they realized their laziness), but really I just hate seeing something unique forced into the restrictive blueprint set for blockbusters now. Furthermore, Abrams' direction seems to be getting worse, not better. Then again, I doubt even Orson Welles could have spun gold from a script by Orci-Kurtzman-Lindelof. What a plague those three are.

My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.

War Horse (Steven Spielberg, 2011)

Like his other release this year, The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg's War Horse indulges in the best and worst of a particular facet of the director's talent. Tintin lacks a proper dramatic arc and works largely without any stakes, yet it showcases Spielberg's talent for choreographing dynamic, vast setpieces of eye-popping visual marvels. War Horse, the more low-key, Oscar-friendly picture, contains moments of such beauty as to border on the poetic, matching the most abstract and haunting shots of the director's canon. But it is also such a hand-holding, tedious affair as to display the most immature, irritating traits of Spielberg's storytelling. In other terms, if Tintin displays Spielberg at his most childlike, War Horse shows him at his most childish.

War Horse barely even gets started before it's in your face with forced wonder, opening on a young English farm boy, Albert (Jeremy Irvine), watching the birth of a foal with fascination. But the film moves through a quick series of shots that continue to convey Albert's instant love of this creature, even as the edits clearly hop over a significant portion of time. Within seconds of screen time, the foal grows into a yearling, but Albert has that same dopey look on his face. Does that mean he walked around like the village idiot for weeks, even months, gawping at a damn horse? And when Albert's lovable alcoholic father (Peter Mullan) buys the horse at an auction just to get one over his landlord, the lad is so overjoyed that the very real possibility his dad just made them homeless matters nothing next to owning "Joey," All the while, John Williams score insists you take a handkerchief, regardless of whether your eyes are wet. This is not the organic Spielberg who could masterfully manipulate an audience to genuine reaction; this is a battering ram methodically slamming against the portcullis until it can break through and shove the intended emotional response down everyone's throat.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

Expanding upon the style that brought him international fame with 2008's Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson makes a chilly, claustrophobic character drama out of John Le Carré's classic spy thriller Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. This is even more impressive considering that the film primarily takes place in vast sets colored in warm, oaken browns (albeit the kind Joyce used to signify death and ossification). Alfredson's vampire film similarly used its expansive white space to actually constrict the frame, and here he goes one step further, swapping out intense but myopic angst for loyalty fears with global consequences. Where youth merely think the whole world is against them, it truly could be if one of these spies slips up, hence why the members of the organization seem to spend more time monitoring each other than anything going on in Russia.