In the Valley of Elah

Mike Deerfield is missing, and AWOL after returning home from a tour Iraq.  As his father Hank (Tommy Lee Jones), a former sergeant and MP, goes looking for his missing son, the soldier is found dead, dismembered and burnt.  Working with a local detective (Charlize Theron), Hank tried to unravel the mystery and determine why his last surviving son was murdered.

The film lacks suspense.  It lacks drama.  It's a journey of discovery and acceptance.  But most of all its sad, not just for the characters but for all the real lives pointlessly destroyed by a pointless war.

In the Valley of Elah
2007, 121 minutes, directed by Paul Haggis

GI Joe: Retaliation

It wouldn't take a Joe to drive a tank through the holes in Cobra's plan, making the entire story a laughable chain of improbably action sequences.

Wait, didn't Mission Impossible already use this plot?

GI Joe: Retaliation
2013,  110 minutes, directed by Jon M. Chu

Red Dawn

Sure, this remake of a 1984 classic is all moving and stuff.  America is my home, too, and I don't think we take too kindly to unwelcome guests.  But it's that very point that makes the film so comically unbelievable in this era.

The producer at the Q&A mentioned that they didn't talk to John Milius prior to or during the remake.  I'm not sure they talked to the rest of the world, or really watched the TV or read the internet either.  The film simply does not work in this day and age, and while it will likely do well riding on the coat tails of Chris Hemsworth's popularity, they could have made an actually sensical film using him instead.

Red Dawn
2012, 129 minutes, directed by Dan Bradley


First, look at it from the pro-America standpoint.  Is that really all the resistance a town of that side would see?  Seriously?  And where is the national guard?  The EMP that knocked out the power grid didn't hurt anybody's cell phones or any car electronics, so most military weaponry would be fine.  And where's the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps.?  I have every confidence in our military to handle a situation like this.  Someone has seriously underestimated them.

Point two, where are our allies?  They mentioned Texas at one point in the film.  Assuming somehow that the invaders took Fort Hood, why isn't the Mexican Army marching in to assist?  Where's Canada?  Europe?  For all they call it a "Self-Defense Force", the Japanese military is plenty formidable, and at this point they would certainly come to our immediate assistance vs. North Korea, knowing that they would likely be next.

Finally, and the most important point, what about the worst aspects of America?  Let's assume the Army is decimated, the Air Force grounded, the Marines all dead.  Let's assume all of our allies abandoned us, laughing all the way to the bank.  The U.S. Navy has enough of a nuclear arsenal deep underwater to obliterate the planet.  If our allies don't assist and the situation looks suitably grim, it's hard to imaging we wouldn't squeeze off a few nukes to push North Korea underwater and make a few holes where major Russian cities used to be.  America truly going down would be a flailing, wild, evil beast.

So anyway, that's what I spent too much of the film thinking about.

Showdown at Area 51

When the newer guy on Burn Notice crashes from the sky, chased by a big guy in a gas mask wielding nanobot shurikens, only some B-movie actor dude and Chiana from Farscape (strangely, as a human) can save the world.

This isn't a very good movie.  It's especially not very good late at night on Siffy when I should be asleep, with regular breaks so Jimmie Johnson can hawk Extenze.

Showdown at Area 51
2007, 96 minutes, directed by C. Roma

X-Men: First Class

Why?  The plot is disjointed and contrived.  I would have so much preferred more effort put into the third film of the original trilogy to make it not suck so much than spend any money on this at all.

Wait, is this supposed to be a reboot?  I can't tell.  That's a large part of the problem.  Set in the 1960s, this film shows events long before those of the trilogy, in a way compatible with (hello Hugh Jackman) the Wolverine origin film.  Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) is a former Nazi scientist bent on world destruction to reform it for the mutant race.  Erik Lehnsherr totally agrees with all of that except Shaw happened to have killed his mother, so Erik teams up with Charles Xavier and his new mutant understudies to take on Shaw and the simultaneous American and Soviet navies.  If they'd made it clear this was a reboot, I might have taken it differently.

X-Men: First Class
2011, 132 minutes, directed by Matthew Vaughn

Outbreak

I think this is the first film I've ever seen with Dustin Hoffman in the lead role.  In truth, he struggles somewhat as an archetypical "good guy" without a character to absorb.  He stars as USAMRIID agent investigating a new disease that has appeared in sub-Saharan Africa.  As it spreads to the United States, he struggles to find the source, save his wife, and fight the establishment determined to suppress the spread through any means necessary.

Outbreak
1995, 127 minutes, directed by Wolfgang Petersen

Terminator: Salvation

They've run out of ways to exploit their "go back in time to save the future" schtick, so at this point they've just turned this franchise into post-apocalyptic warfare with an abundance of references to story lines we're assumed to know.  It could be a Resident Evil script if they'd just replace robots with demons - totally generic.

Terminator: Salvation
2009, 115 minutes, directed by McG

El paramo (The Squad)

This was not what I expected.  When I think "military squad" and "horror" images of Predator waft through my mind.  Instead of a murderous rampage with an alien/occult foe, The Squad is very close up, very suspenseful, very introspective.  If such a film sounds appealing, look for this in 2012.

El paramo (The Squad)
2012, 107 minutes, directed by Jaime Osorio Marquez

Director Jaime Osorio Marquez of El paramo.  My sister-in-law called him "hot".

The director during the Q&A.  He sat near us during our subsequent screening, but my sister-in-law wouldn't go talk to him.  Not that he spoke English...

Director BenDavid Grabinski of "Cost of Living", a short film that played before the feature.

"Cost of Living" production crew.

Captain America: The First Avenger

It all seemed so superficial. Nothing ever presented much of a challenge to the heroes; Captain America is never nicked by a bullet, none of his team is ever hit by the blue rays, etc. The one meaningful death was a godawful slip and fall into a huge ravine, ala Snow White. With lasers that disintegrate an entire human upon any impact, you'd think at least some of them would have picked up a glancing shot. But no, the only thing any of the bad guys can manage to hit is the shield, and that metal is somehow immune both to bullets and disintegration rays.

(Bullets they explain away when the shield is introduced, but the disintegration rays are just assumed. The movie would have been much shorter, though better, if the first one of those that hit the shield had disintegrated it and its bearer, and Steve Rogers' friend would have taken on the role as Captain America with more humility and better equipment. Or swap it around so the friend is the first Captain America and Steve has to follow in his footsteps.)

As it is, it seemed very much to be a superhero product of the 1940s: unfortunately simple and out of its time.

Captain America: The First Avenger
2011, 124 minutes, Joe Johnston

Super 8

J. J. Abrams decided to make an homage to the 1980s kid-adventure genre.  I think he did a pretty good job.  Other than the occasional wink to the audience of the future (the Walkman, film develpment, and drug jokes), it stays pretty firmly rooted in its time and place.  Sure, there are stereotypes aplenty, but that's what an homage is.

Keep in mind that there's some bad language and a selection of body-poppin' brutality.  One difference between now and then: in the 1980s this would have been rated R.

Including the completed home movie in the credits was brilliant.  Make sure you stay for it.

Super 8
2011, 112 minutes, directed by J. .J. Abrams

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe

I like Burn Notice as a show it just works for me.  Sure it's all contrived and improbable, and bullets miss too much, but I enjoy the "how to be a spy" narration.  And I like Bruce Campbell.  So, when a made-for-TV movie pops up outside the normal season, and (at first glance) it looks like they're going to kill off his character, I have to take notice.

It turns out that was a false fear, as a few seconds with any preview bumper would show.  This is the story of how Sam Axe left the service, a short while before the TV show started.  And again, it's all contrived and improbable, but then again, Bruce Campbell thrives like that.  I enjoyed the adventure and look forward to more next season.

Burn Notice: The Fall of Sam Axe
2011, 120 minutes, directed by Jeffrey Donovan

Oh, hey, look at that.  Jeffrey Donovan directed this.

Rules of Engagement

Although I missed the first 20ish minutes of this film, I picked it up quickly and found myself unexpectedly immersed in the characters and story.  It was brisk, direct, unsubtle, exactly befitting a film about U.S. Marines.

However, the ending I was waiting for was presented as words flashed on the screen just before the credit roll.  What the heck?  I would have rather seen those words unsaid, to assume those parties went unpunished, than be told the outcome with no benefit of drama, dialog, character.  If that's all they could provide, I would rather have read a summary of the script than seen the film at all.

Rules of Engagement
2000, 128 minutes, directed by William Friedkin

Epoch

This one starts out fine as far as low-budget sci-fi goes, with a solid hook, decent characters, reasonable dialog.  As it builds it keeps getting better.  But I sense that the original author struggled with an ending.  Sadly, it feels like it just ends.  I think they could have done so much more.

Epoch
2001, 96 minutes, directed by Matt Codd

While looking up the release date, I just noticed that there is a sequel.  I'll see if it picks things up and provides a more suitable ending.

The Expendables

Yes, it's exactly what you think it will be.

The Expendables
2010, 103 minutes, directed by Sylvester Stallone

The A-Team

The concept was good, the story ok, the action prevalent.  But it just never rose to the level of awesomeness I hoped for.  Am I glad I saw it?  Sure.  It was just missing something.

The A-Team
2010, 117 minutes, directed by Joe Carnahan

Iron Man 2

I had mixed feelings about the first Iron Man film.  Sure it was flashy, and there's something fresh in a superhero who unabashedly admits his identity to the world.  But I knew this second film was leading somewhere (namely, to the Avengers movie), and films with intentionally unresolved plot elements are frustrating.

Sure enough, this was a bridge film in every sense.  Picking up shortly after the first film ends, it has the hero grappling with the newly-found fame and controversy of his hero identity, while suffering the usual personal setbacks in his health and social life.  A bad guy is introduced to instigate action and be dealt with, while a larger nemesis goes free*.  Meanwhile half the characters just appear from nowhere, unless you happen to have sat through the credits of the first film like I did

If I were to sit down for a weekend and watch the entire Avengers cycle, this would be a decent, flashy connection between the first film and the celebrity-packed sequel.  Alas, as that sequel as yet does not exist, it just fell short.

Scarlett Johansson seemed - wrong - for her role, somehow.  I just didn't work for me.  And I'm disappointed Gwyneth Paltrow didn't maintain her hair red as it was in the first film.

Iron Man 2
2010, 124 minutes, directed by Jon Favreau

* well, he lives

Avatar

I was so set up to be disappointed, but I was so very not.  Yes, it's a very predictable plot.  It's the exact same plot as at least two different films I've seen before.  But that's ok.  Think about a movie you love, one you've seen a dozen times and can quote along with the dialog.  I think of my first viewing of Avatar in that way - totally predictable but emphatically compelling.

Avatar in 3D
2009, 162 minutes, directed by James Cameron

Universal Soldier: A New Beginning

This is surprisingly good for a bridge story. I usually prefer they let a series lay fallow for longer, then do a clean reboot with a nod to the original. Still, JCVD is as good as ever, the action and pacing is solid, and the film is totally awesome.

Universal Soldier: A New Beginning
2009, directed by John Hyams

Salvage

This dark and gory film doesn't need aliens or zombies or demons to show the depths of human depravity. Some horrors could be entirely man made...

Salvage
2009, directed by Lawrence Gough

Men Who Stare at Goats

As a secret screening, I had no idea what this one would be. It turned out to be marginal. It's a spiritual journey through the Iraq desert, weaving the tales of the U.S. military's 1980s-era New Earth Army and the fate of its solders. It's a "finding yourself" comedy where you aren't meant to laugh (often) but are supposed to feel good about yourself when its over. It's a bit baffling, really. The whole audience was left a big surprised when it just... ended.

Men Who Stare at Goats
2009, 90 minutes, directed by Grant Heslov

(Second time that last-second CGI has marred a film this festival.)