For the last seven years fans have been wondering how we’d recover from the disappointment that was Star Trek: Nemesis, the film that broke the even/odd scheme we’d come to rely on. For everything that J.J. Abrams has done right in Hollywood, had he done enough to take over one of the oldest and most beloved franchises in the industry? Could the writers, actors, director, and studio withstand the undying fanatical cries from the devoted fanbase? Could Star Trek actually become relevant again after a prematurely canceled prequel series and two straight disappointing Next Generation-headlining films? The answer to all of these questions is, of course, a resounding “Yes” as the forty-plus year old franchise is reborn and revitalized under the direction of a capable director, excellent casting, and an excellent story.

All the gushing aside, Star Trek isn’t a perfect film, but its many hits almost completely negate its misses. For every gaping plot hole we get a shout out to the original series or a great line of dialog. For every canon-bucking event, we get pitch-perfect casting and an excellent rapport between characters we’ve known and loved.

The most daunting aspect of the new film would be how to fill the shoe’s of some of sci-fi’s most iconic characters including, but not limited to, Captain James Tiberius Kirk, Mr. Spock, Bones, Scotty, etc. The entire cast is fleshed out well with even smaller supporting rolls like Chekov (Anton Yelchin) getting enough meat and potatoes for the audience to fully understand the character. Enough can’t be said for Karl Urban as Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, he isn’t trying to fully emulate the late DeForest Kelly, but his perfect delivery of classic lines, demeanor, hatred for the “green-blooded hobgoblin” all sink in so well with the audience.

A lot has been said about Zachary Quinto as Spock and Chris Pine as Kirk, Quinto’s performance as the emotionally troubled, younger Spock works so well in the middle-stages of the film as a dramatic event really tests the half human/half Vulcan. Pine’s performance as the womanizing, eff-authority Kirk is just what you would imagine. We already know Kirk has a history of disregarding orders from a superior (as seen in Star Trek III), and it becomes fully realized how very good he is when we finally see his solution to the Kobayashi Maru test.

The rest of the cast is filled out nicely with Simon Pegg as Scotty, John Cho as Sulu, and the stunning Zoe Saldana as Uhura. A welcome addition to the cast is Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike who’s character is fleshed out nicely compared to what we knew of him from the original, unaired Pilot, and subsequent TOS episode “The Menagerie”.

The aforementioned script issues and underwhelming menace don’t detract too much from the overall picture, however keen observers will blow open the fallacies and breakdown of basic logical thinking, but, honestly, you’re having too much fun to care. Even after repeated viewings you’re more than willing to let a few things slide as you gear up for the next set-piece, the next joke, the next overwhelmingly cool CGI shot that modernizes and energizes the film.

The thing about Star Trek is its exciting, from the moment it begins with Nero’s (Eric Bana) attack on the USS Kelvin, to the closing scene of the Enterprise warping away, its never tedius, the two hour runtime flows along, never ebbing, always keeping your eyes glued to the lens-flared screen and still provoking you like no Star Trek film has since The Undiscovered Country, or possibly First Contact.

It seems almost generic these days to call Star Trek a hip reboot of a successful franchise, and if there’s a less cliché term, please use it, but Abrams Star Trek adventure is just that, an adventure, a continuing voyage of the wagon train to the stars where heroes do exist, enemies lurk, and the faithful crew of the Federation flagship keeps us protected, even 40 years later.

If Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race 2000 remake has anything going for it, it’s the old adage; it knows what it is and doesn’t strive for anything more or anything less. Death Race, the remakes simplified name, is a blistering film drenched in pure octane and lacking much of anything else, but this isn’t award winning cinema here and at no point does the film strive to be, its simply there to entertain for nearly two hours and be done with and almost forgotten about on the ride home.

Death Race, sloshing around in development hell for the better part of the new millennium, even having Tom Cruise attached at one point, is now a budget release for Universal in the doldrums of August when the summer has passed us by, but we aren’t quite ready for award season yet. Jason Statham starts as Jensen Ames a man falsely accused of murdering his wife and thrown into Terminal Island prison. As the beginning of the film explains, the economic turmoil in the United States has lead to private corporations taking over detention duties and reality TV becoming slightly more obscene than Flava of Love.

Drivers are now forced to race for freedom, five wins gets you out, however no one has ever gotten five wins so who knows if the rules of a tyrannically warden (Joan Allen) will hold up when she’s faced with losing her biggest moneymaker. You already know Allen’s Hennessey has set up Ames to get him in her prison and star in her TV show. Coming along for the ride are notables like Tyrese Gibson (whose Transformer‘s check must not have cleared) and Ian McShane (who must be really heartbroken by the cancellation of Deadwood).

From the very onset Death Race grabs you by the groin and pulls you along with arresting shots of cars going fast, rockets exploding, and angry men ramming into each other. Its one testosterone drenched scene after another as Ames tries to find a way to escape and stay alive as Hennessey plots to destroy him after he’s served his purpose.

Statham is his everyday self, gruff, bald, quippy, and incredibly fun to watch in what ever he does. It seems as though writers always try to find a way for him to take his shirt off and work out, or work in a really good fight scene where he will take his short off and work out. Allen does a complete 180 from her turn in the Bourne franchise by hamming up a villain-role that is both unbelievable and utterly unbelievable.

That’s the problem with the movie in general; it sets rules and regulations for its universe and then completely negates them as time goes on including the ease of escape for the prisoners at the end of the film, you’ve probably been in Home Depots more heavily guarded than this maximum security prison.

Still, if you have the right mindset for entering, Death Race can have some amusing moments, usually provided by the interchange between Statham and Allen with McShane thrown in for good measure. Paul W.S. Anderson has never really shown himself to be very capable as a writer/director, usually excelling at the director part and failing miserably at the writing half, and that holds true here with horrible dialog and a story strung together for one explosion after another, but you do get fast cars, hot women, and a damn good, albeit forgettable, time.

I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I only know one other person who can give me a run for my money when it comes to geeking out and turning into a total fanboy when it comes to 007. I also consider Pierce Brosnan to be perfectly suited for the role of James Bond, he embodied the role during his tour of duty by providing the action we needed, the quips we craved, and wooing the women we wished we could have. While the series itself succumbed to self-parody and more and more outlandish plots and gadgets, the character was still intact for the most part.

When Casino Royale was first announced (sans Brosnan) you can expect my reservations. The series was rebooting, a new James Bond was being brought in, and the entire series itself was being refreshed to something many in the younger generation were unfamiliar with. There’s no Q, there’s no Moneypenny, but there is the same M? Imagine the confusion of younger fans coming off of the CGI-laced Die Another Day into the more grounded, nearly-gadget-less Royale.

All those fears are unfounded, however, as Casino Royale proves to be one of the, if not the, best James Bond film yet with a perfectly cast lead, a great supporting line-up, interesting story, twists, turns, cars, women, guns, and explosions, James Bond returns to the big screen with a huge bang focusing in on the character and his beginnings rather than invisible cars and laser watches.

A lot needs to be said for Daniel Craig who steps into the role as the sixth actor to play the title character. Craig brings everything to the role and gives the audience more than we could expect. His cocky, arrogant beginnings are believably portrayed and his hardened, deep eyes give the impression of a cold-blooded killer but also the emotion we know Bond still relies on early in his career. Enough speculation and critical analysis of the actor seems totally unwarranted and those who adamantly spoke out against him in the beginning are dining on a feast of crow right now as Craig IS James Bond. I won’t go so far as to say he is better than Sean Connery in the role, as I’ll need several more viewings of Casino Royale and it subsequent sequels to see the range of the character, but based solely on Royale, Craig easily passes Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Brosnan, and George Lazenby.

The movie itself, as previously mentioned, focuses in on the beginnings of 007 and his career at MI6. From the beginning of the film you can see the emotionally driven, arrogant son of a bitch who opposes authority and seems to work for himself. As the movie ends, and Craig delivers the catch phrase we’ve all been longing to hear for 2 hours and 24 minutes you can see a change in the character as all that he has known has fallen apart around him, his emotional attachments severed, and his sense of duty heightened. The movie grounds itself more in reality (for the most part) with out any of the outlandish (and totally unbelievable) gadgets that cropped up in the ladder installments of the series. The gadgets that you do find here are entirely possibly in the real world, as is the rest of the film.

Everything about the film was in question two years ago and now, 24 months later, the only question we have is how long until we get to see 007 on the big screen again. Casino Royale is good, scary good, so good in fact that after the credits began to roll with the familiar theme in the background all I could think about was if there was another showtime tonight and how do I get tickets.

With so many excellent parts to the film it’s nearly impossible to touch on them all, but Casino Royale is a film that needs to be experienced by both fans and non-fans of the franchise. Thinking of it as an introduction to the spy movie genre or an extension of a 40 year franchise, either way Casino Royale ranks as one of the best times you will have at the movies and easily the best film of 2006.

See it once, then see it again. His name is Bond, James Bond, and he’s back and better than ever.

King Kong is an amazing achievement in filmmaking, and even with all the buzz surrounding the three hour length of the film, or the questionable casting of some parts, the film still manages to stun the audience in amazement.

Truly, after viewing the original only a week prior to seeing the remake I can say that the 2005 version of the film rivals that of its predecessor in many categories and is a far superior film as far as depth of story and visual effects. This isn’t to say that the original 1933 version is cinema trash, it still holds a special place in the eyes of many film students and film fans as an achievement in special effects and originality.

Director Peter Jackson has taken some creative liberties in the way his King Kong relates to the original (we won’t even mention the 1970’s version). The long lost “spider pit” scene has been restored to the script and turns out to be one of the creepiest and most hopeless scenes in the film as our heroes struggle to survive under the onslaught of dozens of large arachnids and other assorted creatures. The culminating and mouth-dropping scene of an Allisaurus and King Kong locked in battle from the original has been broadened to contain a much longer battle and feature three dinosaurs instead of just one.

The story itself has been infused with a lot more emotion and many more scenes in which you see the true feelings Kong has for Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts). Just as the original the girl in distress is scared of the 25-foot beast, but as she comes to understand him more, and he truly begins to fall for her, the story is almost heart-wrenching as you know the ending to the film long before it happens and the impact is still as prevalent as even. I won’t lie, I really wanted to cry at the end of the film as the script by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Jackson really does strike an emotional cord with the movie-goer.

The remakes story mirrors that of the original in most aspects. Filmmaker Carl Denham’s (Jack Black) latest film is going to be sold off as stock footage, so he rushes his production crew aboard a charted ship headed for Skull Island to use the ruins of a lost civilization as a backdrop. After his leading lady drops out, Denham spies Ann Darrow stealing an apple from a newsstand and saves her in a bind (a nice throwback to the original’s beginning predicament and meeting between Darrow and Denham). Denham enlists the young beauty to star in his film and they quickly rush off to catch the boat where Ann finally gets to meet playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody) whom she has longed to gain an audition with. From there we travel to Skull Island and the fun of traversing through a lost world begins.

The extra hour on the run time compared to the original’s 107 minutes goes towards character development and the fleshing out of some new additions to the cast. For the most part this extra hour is hardly noticed as the bits of humor and action Jackson is able to provide give the audience enough to remain interested until the meat of the film takes over after Kong is introduced about 60 minutes in.

The stunning Naomi Watts seems like the perfect choice to take over the role pioneered by Fay Wray and she pull off the role with flying colors as the conflicted beauty caught between the love of an ape and a man. Brody in the modified role of Jack Driscoll also does an adequate job of pulling off the “action man” who sets out to save Ann from the clutches of the beast. The only real role that seems miscast is that of Carl Denham. Jack Black pulls off the role, there’s no question about that, but the persona that we’ve come to expect from him just seems to throw the audience off. You’re waiting for his sly smirk to turn into a wailing laugh as he breaks out in a musical number about sausage. And while he won’t get as much recognition as he deserves, Andy Serkis once again pulls off an amazing motion capture performance as Kong.

There’s so much to say about King Kong that it’s almost impossible to get to it all in this short of a review. There’s just nothing that can detract from the cinematic masterpiece that is Peter Jackson’s remake of the 1933 classic. Just as he did with The Lord of the Rings, Jackson once again solidifies himself as one of the premiere filmmakers in Hollywood with a knack for both inspiring action and heart felt emotion. Only one viewing of King Kong would be a disservice to the picture as there’s so much to follow and so much to see in the film that it nearly demands repeat viewings only to show you how well it has been constructed. In a year when the box office has continued to tank week after week and sequels and shills seem to be the standard Hollywood fare it’s nice to see that there’s still some emotion in filmmaking.

From the moment Charlie and the Chocolate Factory begins you can see Tim Burton’s influence in both direction and visual style. The sly humor he manages to portray in the opening credits is only a prelude to what is to come as Charlie becomes his finest work since the original Batman in 1989.

That’s not to say every Burton movie since then hasn’t been good, but none have been this good.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tells the story of Charlie Bucket, a simple minded youngster living with his parents and grandparents in a sideways tilted house in the center of a town featuring the smokestacks of Willy Wonka’s candy factory. After the factory closed down years earlier because of greedy competitors stealing Wonka’s ideas, many are surprised to see smoke once again rising from those chimneys and Wonka virtually disappear. Now, the candy aficionado announces that five children will be invited to visit the factory with a grand prize awaiting one of them. The children, along with one adult, arrive at the factory, and the fun begins.

The story itself is based on the book of the same name by Roald Dahl. With some creative licensing here and there, from the parts I’m familiar with, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remains true to the source material, with some added modernism thrown in for good measure.

What really stands out is Johnny Depp’s performance as Willy Wonka, a truly disturbed, almost homicidal character who presents himself, and his factory, in a visual style we could only contribute to Burton.

Upon first laying eyes on the factory, with is chocolate cascading waterfall and edible grass, you’re left with a sense of awe. Whereas the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder, didn’t have the aid of computer generated effects, Burton’s take almost over uses in some cases. Most of the time, however, the CGI is a great compliment to the story.

Aside from the CG, the film itself is masterfully put together and edited into a fast paced, eye-candy laced joy ride featuring an inventive story and great music. Unlike the original 1971 film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not a musical. Aside from the Oompa Loompas (Deep Roy) singing after each child has his or her mishap, the entire film is dialog dependant thankfully sparing us from the Disney influenced subculture we’ve brought upon ourselves.

Getting back to Depp as Wonka, the performance is among his best, especially with the added subplot relating to his candy-forbidding father (Christopher Lee). The arrogance displayed by the character, makes him all the more convincing and funny. In one scene Veruca Salt’s father hands Wonka a business card to which he flings over his shoulder without skipping a beat. It is definitely one of the funniest parts of the film.

On the humor front, there are several scenes where you could hear cricket’s chirp aside from out small group laughing. Being a PG movie, there were quite a few children, therefore it was assumed many of the younger patrons wouldn’t get the jokes, but most of the parents didn’t get them either. I guess they were meant for that early-twentysomething sweet spot we seem to fall into.

Warning: The following review contains spoilers.

I’ll just come right out and say it. With all the hype, hoopla, and press surrounding War of the Worlds, you would think it would be a better movie. Instead we are left with and E.T. meets Independence Day mash-up that is so poorly written even the “star power” of Tom Cruise can’t save it from being just another summer movie.

In fact, any marketing material that claims this film is an epic summer movie is clearly talking about Batman Begins. Even with the huge numbers put up opening day and this past holiday weekend, War of the Worlds is no where near the quality of film I was expecting. You’d think the team up between Cruise and Spielberg would generate the film to end all films, but by the time the credits starting to roll, I just wanted this movie to end.

You develop a love/hate relationship with Worlds, mainly because you want to like it so much, and the parts you turn your brain off and just watch the wanton destruction of the human race, you do like it. What inevitably happens is the destruction only makes up about 25% of the film leaving the other 75% to focus on the 2D characters so honed in on their cliché molds that nothing really stands out until the Rainbow Happy-time Care Bear Ending that makes you immediately want to lick the goo stuck to the theater floor in the hopes you might pass out.

War sees Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) inherit his two kids for the weekend while his ex-wife and her new beau race off to Boston to meet her parents. Like every single dad, Ray has no food in his house, his son hates him, his daughter is spoiled, and he rebuilds engines in his kitchen. Can you see the excitement building already?

When a freak storm causes lightening to strike one particular spot dozens of times, everything electronic shuts down as alien “Tripods” spring to life, having been hidden beneath the streets of New York, and every other major city across the globe. But these aliens aren’t the Reese’s Pieces eating, finger healing kind we’ve come to expect from Spielberg, no, these aliens want us dead, and they zap us with laser beams and harvest our bodily fluids as fertilizer.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

Then the movie ends, just like that. You don’t even see it coming. It’s so abrupt and so sudden that Tom and I looked at each other like, “That was it? That’s how they’re going to end this?” It isn’t that the way they ended it was bad, it was the execution that really felt as though there was a third grade contest to write it, and this is what won.

The fact that you feel absolutely nothing for the characters is only a side-point to the overall disappointment. Cruise portrays Ferrier adequately, knowing that he doesn’t have a lot to work with, but Dakota Fanning’s Rachael and Justin Chatwin’s Robbie are so underwritten and paint-by-the-numbers that the déjà vu of, “I’ve seen this character 100 times before,” really starts to set in five minutes after they’re introduced.

Also, the primary focus of the film is Ray trying to get his kids to their mother in Boston, but why? It makes no real sense that he would brave big, busy cities filled with canon fodder instead of hiding out in the countryside and waiting to see what happens. In a moment of brilliance Ray actually does this only to meet one of the most insane characters I’ve seen all year in Tim Robbins’ Ogilvy. The relationship between Ogilvy and Ferrier tries to display the social underpinnings of humans under stress. This part succeeds, although it limps along until the act’s defining moment.

Spielberg’s direction is adequate to collect a paycheck, but there isn’t the magic and cinematography we saw in E.T. or Saving Private Ryan. Instead we get another by-the-book performance mainly used by the distributors to market the film.

I’m really not trying to be overtly harsh on the film, and maybe I’m making a point that Hollywood really can’t expect us to continue to go to the movies when they continue to release half-assed product such as this. There was so much potential here that it all feels wasted for the short term goal of making money rather than art. When the studios finally figure out that we wouldn’t mind a good movie (like Batman Begins) in the summer rather than this standard schlock, we’ll either be watching TV, or, better, listening to Orson Well’s radio broadcast and letting our imagination do the work.

To everyone associated with this film: try harder next time.

The Longest Yard, a remake of a 1974 film of the same name, may not have the same mainstream and broad appeal that last week’s Revenge of the Sith had, but after viewing it, I can honestly say I enjoyed it much, much more than the final chapter in the Star Wars trilogy.

The film centers on Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler), a former pro-football player who was kicked out of the league during a point-shaving scandal that left him drinking and with an up-tight girlfriend (Courtney Cox). After taken her Bentley for a drunken chase, Crewe is arrested and sent to prison, although life on the inside begins to mirror life on the outside.

Warden Hazen (James Cromwell) has pulled a few strings to get Crewe in his prison. Hazen believes that Crewe can give his team of guards a few lessons before the season starts. Paul recommends playing against a team of prisoners to boost confidence, but a series of events puts the slapped together team with an advantage. From there some good-old-fashioned American violence takes place, and the audience couldn’t be any happier.

The casting of Chris Rock and Adam Sandler along side each other seems like pure genius on paper, and for the most part, works very well on screen. The fact of the matter is, Sandler and Rock don’t share a huge amount of screen time, but when they do, some of the film’s best one-liners are delivered. In order to give the appearance of a capable football team, the production staff hired on former pro-wrestlers including Stone Cold Steve Austin and Goldberg. I guess all those years of throwing punches and pretending to be hurt paid off.

The rest of the cast is a collection of one-joke wonders, but in a film such as this, and with a football team as big as it is, each one of them gets a moment to shine. We have the big, dumb player who can hit hard, Cheeseburger Eddy (Terry Crews) who, amazingly, can pull various McDonald’s menu items from his clothing, Nelly as the nearly-unstoppable running back Earl Megget, as well as former NFL star Michael Irvin once again donning number 88. Finally, and most disturbingly, the team of inmates is cheered on by a group of transvestite cheerleaders headed up by a very out-of-work Tracy Morgan.

The film’s jokes seem to hit 90% of the time and while most of them are coming from the gutter, you wouldn’t expect anything more or less from a paint-by-numbers Adam Sandler picture, albeit one of the best ones. Sure, Sandler has shown that he can act in movies like The Wedding Singer, Spanglish, and Punch Drunk Love, but he still knows what his core fans want, and that’s poop jokes and swearing.

Chris Rock, appearing in his second movie of the weekend (he’s also in Madagascar) plays his usual self, a wise-cracking, repressed black-man in a white-man’s world, and it’s just as funny as ever.

I can’t honestly say how close the film is to the original, having never seen it, but Burt Reynolds’ inclusion in the movie is icing on the cake to an already stacked cast the performs more than adequately.

The Longest Yard maintains is pacing throughout the picture, and while the cinematography and direction are basic, its more than enough to get the job done. You don’t need fancy CG effects to see a guy get flattened. While you are never emotionally attached to any of the characters, a turning point in the middle of the movie has you pumped up for the big game.

The film is extremely violent in its portrayal of the pigskin competition at the climax and, quite frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way with a group of sadistic guards taking on those they continue to harass. Jumping kicks, guys crapping themselves from getting hit so hard (one of the better jokes in the movie as well), and Adam Sandler being Adam Sandler provide a fun experience for young and not-quite-too-old.

The Longest Yard isn’t quite up to par with Happy Gilmore as Sandler’s finest work, but it does top everything else including the passable Billy Madison, atrocious Little Nicky, and sub-par Waterboy. If you’re a Sandler fan, and are aching for him to return to his roots, although still show some grown as an actor, The Longest Yard is a touchdown.