Reviews

Like many people who will see and comment on this film, I grew up on Star Trek without becoming a Trekkie. The characters are old friends and form a trope of childhood and adolescence. If you enjoyed Star Trek TOS in this way, you don't need to be a convention-going Trekkie to want to see these characters and Roddenberry's legacy treated with respect. The movie accomplishes this task while also bringing freshness and new creative energy to the Trek space saga.

In fact, the new film is so character driven that we don't really care if Pine is not Shatner or Quinto not Nimoy. It doesn't matter because the script and direction imbue the new actors' interpretations with glimpses and glimmers of the old actors' creations: Pine's chomping on an apple while cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test, which references Shatner's scene in Wrath of Khan in which he reminisces on the same event; the new McCoy's slight, undefinable Southern accent as well as the more obvious references to the character's notorious irritability; Scotty's easy smile and child-like joy in the ship's abilities; even the last view of Christopher Pike in a wheelchair at the end of the film foreshadows that captain's fate in the original series. Quinto's Spock is perhaps the exception here, seeming to live outside Nimoy's creation because of a (largely implausible) backstory with Uhura but nevertheless linked to the older Spock through Nimoy's cameo. What makes these references work is that they are subtle; they are not elbow jabs in the ribs of Trekkies so they can chuckle knowingly at the insider references. They are simply there for those who can notice them, and even for veterans of the original series they may be too fleeting to be noticed immediately.

The other part is the freshness: the re-imagined Enterprise--also a trope from childhood but now with a makeover that rekindles the sense of wonder people must have felt when seeing the original series the first time. Then the utterly new: Nero's ship, surely one of the most sinister in a long line of enemy vessels designed to convey menace through architecture. It succeeds brilliantly--all sharp, jagged surfaces and uneven planes, a nightmarish mixture of M.C. Escher and Dario Argento.

There's no need to go too far into special effects or even the story. The former are overwhelmingly good, though that's simply to be expected these days. The latter is somewhat obtuse and I'm still not sure I quite get it. But the reason these things are secondary is the same reason Star Trek has always been and continues to be successful. It brings strong, well-defined characters together and lets us see how they interact in a future world brought to life with the detail and fantasy of Roddenberry's amazing imagination. Long live Star Trek.

I love a good haunted-house movie that eschews violence and gore for psychological terror ("The Changeling," I think, is an excellent example of the genre) but "The Haunting" falls short in this respect. It is a well-crafted film, especially with regard to the Caligari-like camera-work, but I found myself more involved in the richly appointed sets and imaginative score than I did in the story and its characters. Nell's constant inner-monologue voice-overs not only grew tiresome as the movie wore on, but also looked like a substitute for good screen writing and character development. It was as though she were providing footnotes to the audience so they knew what she was thinking. This may have been OK in the early sixties but now simply seems dated and quaint. The same can be said for the entire Freudian/Elektra-complex/lesbian subplot, which now provokes knowing titters the same way similar themes do in Hitchcock's "Psycho" and "Marnie" (which, however, remain far better and more watchable films). The few scares there were in the movie fell far short of compensating for these defects. Overall the film makes for quite a boring two hours, though it does have an undeniable historical interest.

This film is yet another example of Spike Lee waving his arms at the audience and screaming, `Look at this camera angle! Isn't it cool? Aren't I a great artist?' Nothing is more boring than watching someone trying too hard to be artistic, and this movie gives you three hours of precisely that boredom. The fine actors in this film do not speak as characters, with unique personalities and convictions, but function only as factotums for Lee's pompous social posturing and half-baked intellectual conceits. Or they are simply wasted. In one scene, Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the most expressive character actors to come along in recent memory, spends an entire scene talking into a window with his face away from the camera. The editing looks like it was done by a college film class in someone's garage. After garbling a compelling story with his overbearing pontificating, Lee frantically wraps it up with that most trite confession of the mediocre filmmaker: a voice over. And what a long, droning one it is. Poor Brian Cox tries valiantly to lend some nobility to Lee's insufferable kitsch, but not even he is up to the task. And 9/11. This film has nothing to do with 9/11. That tragedy is merely another device Lee exploits to add some semblance of integrity to this preachy, self-absorbed piece of dreck. Lee is fit for TV commercials and nothing more. At least he advertises himself very well.

When philistines who can only appreciate the usual Hollywood formulas (things that go boom, John Williams scores, spoon-fed plots, etc.) think of "artsy-fartsy" European films, this is the kind of thing they must have in mind. This exercise in directorial masturbation fits the stereotype of the art-house yawner to a tee. The actors (most of whom are very fine) seem to be staring into space throughout the film, as if wondering how possibly to fill the yawning voids in their long, drawn-out scenes. The various stories all have promise, but are never brought together in a meaningful way that would convey the argument the director is obviously trying very hard to make. Like the actors, the excellent score and cinematography are not enough to save this ponderous, self-indulgent film, which manages to be intellectual without being intelligent. European directors have long understood that movies can be both, as well as compelling and memorable. Unfortunately, "The End of Violence" is a glaring exception to this rule.

This film came out when I was eight years old, and my parents (rather unwisely) took me to see it with them. That night I had horrible nightmares. In my sleep, I ran around my darkened bedroom, absolutely terrified, clawing at the walls and looking for the door. For weeks later I would talk about "the murderer" and showed an odd fascination with knives and long black coats. My parents never repeated that mistake again. I guess the US rating system, which was established not long after this film was released, was not such a bad idea after all.

I saw the film again much later in life and was reminded of what had affected me so strongly: the powerful and finely drawn images--especially the excellent use of architecture and perspective. The opening scene of the attempted murder, the eye peering through the hole in the door, and the gloved hands fetishistically caressing the various knives--these scenes happen to be some of the most indelible images from my childhood not only for the terror they aroused in me then, but also for their aesthetic power. I think it is this stylistic aspect of Argento's directorial debut that compensates for its uneveness in practically all other areas.