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Star Trek Into Darkness 2013
J.J. Abrams' first Star Trek was a terrific and uncommon example of how to cleverly and respectfully reboot a beloved franchise. It established a scenario where both the original series and the modern remake could exist side-by-side while sharing an overall tone.
Star Trek Into Darkness, by contrast, is exactly what I feared would happen with a remake. All of the wit and ambition of the first film has been replaced with lazy fan-service. The relationship between the central characters…
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Jack Reacher 2012
I get the feeling Jack Reacher desperately wants to be taken seriously as an extension of the great 70s paranoia thrillers like The Parallax View. The problem is that its main producer is also applying his limited acting range (he has two emotions: intense and very intense) to the main role, which means the character of Jack Reacher ultimately comes across as predictably infallible, completely unflappable and entirely boring. The whole thing was also strangely televisual. Less Three Days of the Condor and more MacGyver. Disappointing.
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Skyfall 2012
If Casino Royale was a post-Bourne Bond, then Skyfall is most certainly a post-Tinker Tailor Bond. For a modern blockbuster, the pace is positively glacial, and for the first time in years, we see Bond engage in actual spycraft. This is a welcome relief to the exhausting parkour and shooting that so dominated the previous films.
What's not so welcome, though, is the fact that Sam Mendes has delivered an origin story not for the modern, 21st century Bond, but…
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Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 2004
Anchorman is Will Ferrell at his most unconstrained. With no-one on set apparently willing or able to rein him in, what's left is 90 minutes of actors trying not to corpse at his ridiculous non-sequiturs. Tedious.
