If you take away the wonderful sweetness of 2009’s “500 Days of Summer,” you would be left with “Like Crazy.” Both films explore young love in its idealistic state, but “Summer” does it with a light airiness while the latter employs cold calculation. “Like Crazy” is a well-made film with two strong leads that ultimately fails to appreciate the relationship at its core.

The courtship between the two main characters, Jacob (Anton Yelchin) and Anna (Felicity Jones), begins when Anna leaves a long note on Jacob’s car after a college class. The details of the letter are never revealed but it ends with the line, “Please don’t think I’m a nutcase.” Jacob laughs and calls her later and their relationship begins.

It’s then that the movie makes one of its best choices. Instead of a montage showing the couple dating and learning about each other with a 90s pop song, “Like Crazy” chooses instrumental music to showcase the blossoming relationship. Their love isn’t the cutesy “win a prize bear to take home at a carnival” type of love. It’s the wonderful but tricky love of real life.

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Anton Yelchin has arrived. The young actor, who had memorable roles in 2009’s “Star Trek” and this year’s “The Beaver,” has had featured  roles in films like “Charlie Bartlett” and “Alpha Dog” but he’s never really had a star vehicle that helped make him a household name. However, his new role as a teenager who suspects that his neighbor is a vampire in the fun horror-comedy “Fright Night” could change that.

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In this remake of the 1985 film, Yelchin plays a teenager named Charley Brewster who lives with his single mother in the Las Vegas suburbs. After he starts dating a beautiful girl in school, he’s become extremely popular and spends much of his time avoiding his former friend Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Ed is considered a dork by his classmates so Charley doesn’t want to be seen even talking to him. However, after threatening to tell others about Charley’s embarrassing youth, Ed gets a chance to talk to  Charley and warn him that his new neighbor Jerry (Colin Farrell) is a vampire who has been hunting down some of their classmates.

After Ed goes missing himself, Charley starts to investigate the theory. He watches Jerry out the window,  trying to figure out what his new neighbor is up to. When Jerry wants to borrow some alcohol from Charley, Charley tries to find out  if Jerry can enter his home without being invited first, a test to see if Jerry is a real vampire. That scene arrives with a quiet tension that underlies the relationship between the two neighbors. Unfortunately, scenes like that are few and far between as the mystery is soon solved and Charley discovers the truth rather quickly about his neighbor’s true intentions.

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What’s to Like

This remake of 1985’s “Fright Night” has potential. It has a strong cast with rising talent Anton Yelchin (“The Beaver”) featured alongside Toni Collette and Colin Farrell. The trailer is reminiscent of  2007’s “Disturbia,” which also told the story of a teenager who believes that his neighbor is killing people. “Disturbia” was a great thriller so “Night” might have learned something from its success.

What’s to Dislike

Over the past few years, several horror movies have been remade that pale in comparison to the originals. The new “Nightmare on Elm Street,” for instance, had a solid trailer but turned out to be a terrible film. Did I mention that this new “Fright Night” is in 3D? That sounds like a bad omen to me. (more…)

Rebooting Bond with Daniel Craig was Bold. Christopher Nolan’s Reinvention of Batman was genius. But some thought it was overly-ambitious, even audacious, to attempt to restart the Star Trek franchise. It has begun to pay off already for Paramount Pictures, and there will dividends for years to come.

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

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Several sources at competing studios have told me that J.J. Abrams’ all-new reboot of Star Trek (Paramount), which debuted last night at 7pm at many of its 3,849 locations, may have grossed as much as $6.5M-$7.5M. Studio honchos are “locked down tight” about actual numbers, but that is in the same ballpark as Transformers (Dreamworks/Paramount), which grabbed $8.8M in its previews starting at 8pm on Monday, July 2 during the summer of 2007. (What portion of ticket sales fall into Thursday and what percentage fall into Friday will likely be an open question even after final numbers are in.)

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

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The all-new J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek (Paramount) will win the second weekend of the Hollywood Summer Box Office season by at least a couple of light years over Fox’s fast-fading X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but some of the astronomical numbers I’ve seen floating around in the blogosphere are very over-heated. Make no mistake, this movie will open extraordinarily well, but it’s not going to play out as a typical front-loaded blockbuster. Moviegoers need time to shake off the disappointment of the final TV series Enterprise (starring Scott Bakula and canceled after four seasons) and the disastrous 2002 final film Star Trek: Nemesis ($43.3M domestic). It will take time for a new generation of fans to discover the magic of Gene Rodenberry’s vision of the future through Abrams’ magical lens.

As of Wednesday night, Star Trek is cruising with 94% Fresh (positive) reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and critics are slinging some seriously glowing hyperbole.

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