A really good movie trailer can get its hooks so deep in you that you actually find yourself – a grown adult with actual responsibilities in life – carrying around two months worth of excitement for what promises to be a great two hours.

When that happens, disappointment is almost sure to follow. Hollywood promises are almost always empty promises.

So it is with the kind of frustration born of over a month of lying to ourselves about ‘this time being different’ that we take a look at the feature film “Hanna” on Take a Movie to Work at Declaration Entertainment.

Of course, it’s not all bad. This isn’t a Roland Emmerich movie after all. The first twenty minutes of Hanna are fabulous. The film opens in the bleak, barren wilderness of arctic Finland where a wild-looking young girl – Hanna – stalks a caribou through the frozen woods. The remoteness of the setting is accentuated perfectly by the utter lack of score or dialogue. When Hanna looses her hand-made arrow, the only sounds are hoof beats and panting.

As Hanna cleans her game, a man appears behind her. “You’re dead,” he says, “I’ve killed you.” A moment later, Hanna charges the man in a no-holds-barred fight that might leave either of them dead.

The man is Hanna’s father, Erik Heller – played by the always capable Eric Bana – a former operative for the CIA who has brought his charge to this rural wilderness to raise her, off the grid, and train her to be a self-sufficient, multi-lingual, brutal assassin. While the relationship is built on struggle, the love the two share for each other is palpable.

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“Adapt or die.” Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) lives her life by this creed. Since she was a baby, her father Erik (Eric Bana), a rogue CIA agent, has trained her to survive anything. In their cabin above the Arctic Circle, Erik taught Hanna languages, geography, history – and how to kill. Now a teenager, Hanna is ready to leave her rugged lifestyle and see the world she’s only heard of. 

But Marissa (Cate Blanchett), a high level government operative with a vendetta against Erik, will stop at nothing to kill Hanna. With Marissa and her assassins on her tail, Hanna’s quest for freedom becomes a fight for survival. In the real world of hunter and hunted, Hanna’s skills are put to the test, and this time, death awaits the slightest mistake. 

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Joe Wright has enjoyed a successful and acclaimed directorial career, from his feature length debut with the latest “Pride and Prejudice” to the acclaimed “Atonement.” In “Hanna,” Wright’s abilities shine bright. From a sterile CIA compound in the Moroccan desert to a dilapidated fairytale-themed amusement park in Germany, Wright’s locational choices fit his action perfectly. And the Chemical Brothers’ soundtrack complements beautifully. In one scene, Hanna wanders through a trashy subway. The strings accompanying the scene blends with the crazy babbling of the homeless Hanna passes, mixing and rising like an orchestra tuning before a performance. Hanna’s fear and loneliness are perhaps at their peak here, and both are beautifully mirrored in the scene’s every aspect. 

Occasionally Wright’s cinematographic choices overreach – one fight for instance occurs in ridiculous, unnecessary slow motion – but by and large his camerawork captures the beauty of the life and landscapes that Hanna is seeing for the first time. 

Fairytales feature prominently in the film. Key scenes occur in a fairytale theme park. Hanna’s only keepsakes from a mother she never knew are a strip of photo booth pictures and a warn copy of “Grimm’s Fairy-tales.” Early in the film she opens the book to the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and its hardly a stretch of the imagination to see Melissa as a wolf, hungry for Hanna and her “hunter” father. I see “Hanna” as Wright’s fairytale – his coming-of-age story for the generations. 

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Never in a million years did I think Judd Apatow was capable of making something as sharp and penetrating as “Funny People.” Never. Since the director first started dabbling in film, I’ve been a harsh critic of everything he’s touched, labeling it as over-rated, overlong, self-indulgent and as forgettable as last week’s “National Enquirer.” Well, past is the past. “Funny People” is proof that this was a director working towards something, earning his chops and feeling his way to bigger things. And it was worth the wait. “Funny People” is kinda brilliant — an insightful, touching and intelligent dramedy…  James L. Brooks at his best but with a whole lot of dick jokes.

Adam Sandler is George Simmons, a comedian/movie star as wealthy and popular as Sandler, but having turned his back on his family and cheated on his one true love, Laura (Leslie Mann), he’s now left with only “show-biz friends,” which means he has no friends at all. In-between making films like “Merman” (“Splash” with a guy mermaid) and private-jetting to corporate standup gigs that pay $300k, this desolate 40 year-old haunts a Malibu mansion and looks to fill his emptiness with willing groupies and everything money can buy. (more…)

I just cannot get behind this Star Trek rebirth.  The whole thing is just so unrealistic.  Not the warp speed or phasers or beaming about the universe – those are at least remotely plausible.  I am talking about the fact that the starship Enterprise is composed entirely of officers and yet it still seems to function.  Where are the non-commissioned officers (NCO), the petty officers and sergeants who actually make any military organization run?  No, I can suspend disbelief over Klingons and tribbles, and I actively support the notion of green alien hotties.  But the idea of a functioning military unit without sergeants is just a wormhole too far.

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Hollywood movies often focus on the commanders, the captains and colonels, but they have also managed to highlight some great sergeants as well.  When you are picking out DVDs for next weekend, remember that May 16th is Armed Forces Day and consider a few selections that show the sergeant in all his gruff and grumbling glory. 

If you have never experienced the joy of going through basic training and do not plan to, your first stop should be Full Metal Jacket, with R. Lee Ermey’s legendary portrayal of a Marine drill instructor who must have missed out on the block of instruction on sensitivity.  I saw this in the theater about a week before I reported to Basic.  That was a poor idea. (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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The summer kicks off in earnest on Friday with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” It’s followed quickly by “Star Trek” the next week.

Both franchises are beloved totems of my youth.

I remember biking down to the 7-11 to get the latest X-Men comic just about as fondly as I do seeing “Star Trek: The Wrath of Kahn” 13 times one summer at the local Edwards theater.

That makes me wonder which I want to see more.

There’s been very little, review-wise, on “Wolverine,” even given the workprint leaked online. But yesterday, Ain’t It Cool News posted a psuedo-review that sheds some light. (more…)

The first reviews of JJ Abrams’ “Star Trek” hit the web today and they should please fans of the series, if not fans of Matt Damon.

How did Damon weasel his way into this?

After denying it for months, Abrams revealed to Life magazine recently that Damon was his first choice for Captain Kirk:

“…it would have been great to work with Matt – but at the end of the day, it was such a better move to cast the movie with unknowns.” 

The reviewers agree. (more…)

As a veteran, I want to say “Thanks” to Hollywood.

Too often, the only thing we hear about the Industry is that a new movie is coming out that portrays our soldiers as near mindless half-wits turned into raving murderers by America’s unjust wars. But that kind of nonsense is not the whole story.

Recently, J.J. Abrams, the director of the new “Star Trek” re-boot packed up cast members like Chris Pine, Eric Bana, and the lovely Zoe Saldana and flew off to premiere their film. This premiere was not for a bunch of overpaid, over-pampered movie stars in some gaudy theater. Instead, it was in a dusty hangar in the Middle East, and the audience was made up of our troops. And that is not the exception. (more…)