But they’re not sticking with me, for some reason.  I can remember a few details here and there, and the broad strokes of the stories are still more or less present in my head … but I spent a large portion of the sixth movie thinking to myself, “Man, I don’t remember much of this.”

Is that a problem with me or a problem with the movie(s)?

Either way, it’s definitely a big part of the reason why I can’t quite summon up any love for them.  I definitely like them, and I’d guess that at some point a few years down the line I’m going to be shelling out a couple of hundred bucks for a big, fat Blu-ray box set of all eight movies.

But do I love them?  I just can’t honestly answer that question with a “yes.”

Spoilers from this point forward.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a movie that is full of tiny, subtle emotion, and while it’s dealing with this sort of thing, it’s terrific.  Take, for one example, most of the scenes between Harry and Ginny.  There is a surprising sexuality to these scenes that is both serious and funny, and also manages to be quite suggestive without sacrificing even a little bit of the chasteness that must necessarily come with a PG-rated film.  It works almost completely.  (As do Hermione’s scenes with Ron.)

Thing is, when the movie gets to what has got to be considered the most emotional development of the series thus far — Dumbledore’s murder at the hands of Snape — the movie drops the ball.  Right at the goal line … just fumbles it right out onto the grass.

Dumbledore’s death ought to be the kind of thing that milks tears out of every eye in the house.  Never seen a Harry Potter movie before?  Too bad, it’s time for you to cry now.  Seen ‘em all nineteen times each?  Time to use those napkins, coated though they may be in theatre-butter fingerprints.

If Star Trek could manage this in its first ten minutes with a character we’d never even seen before, why can’t Half-Blood Prince?  Dumbledore is by now one of the more famous characters in all of fantasy fiction; how come his death doesn’t have the resonance of, say, Gandalf’s fall at Khazad-dûm?  It’s inexcusable, really, and while it doesn’t kill the movie (not even close), I think it keeps it from being the great film some critics have insisted it is.

Some of this, I think, is down to the choice of composer.  Nicholas Hooper, hand-picked by director David Yates, began his affiliation with the series on Order of the Phoenix, for which he turned in a score that is, at best, serviceable.  His work here is similarly uninspired.  Compare it to John William’s work on the first three films; admitted, J.W.’s music was occasionally overbearing, but it also created a terrific atmosphere (I defy you to listen to “Hedwig’s Theme” and not feel a bit as if you’re on the Hogwarts Express).  It established an emotional connection to the world that, had he been present on the fourth, fifth, and sixth films as well, could have worked wonders.

But it need not have been Williams, specifically.  Any genuinely good composer could have turned the trick.  Go take a look back at the Khazad-dûm sequence in The Fellowship of the Ring, and pay attention to Howard Shore’s work.  It’ll slay you.

Now, granted, that’s probably one of the best scores ever written for a film, so it’d be a bit unfair to expect something as good in Half-Blood Prince, or, really, in any movie.  But, again, let’s look a short ways back at Star Trek, and at Michael Giacchino’s music during George Kirk’s sacrifice onboard the U.S.S. Kelvin.  I’d stop well short of claiming that this is one of the best sequences of film scoring in movie history, but there’s no need for superlatives; it’s enough to say simply that it’s a remarkably well-scored scene, and one that takes full advantage of what film music can do.  Film music, used properly, works to emotionally link the viewer with the movie, and to tie those connections together tightly; good music in a movie will tip it over the edge from being something an audience is enjoying to being something the audience is, while watchint it, living and breathing.  Good film music, used properly, turns a movie from an entertainment into an experience.

Half-Blood Prince does not take advantage of what film music can do.  It’s just that simple.  I don’t want to be too harsh on Nicholas Hooper, who is probably doing his best, and simply may not be capable of better.  Instead, this is where I start blaming David Yates, and the film’s producers, who ought to have realized Hooper’s relative inability after the last film and hired somebody who could do a better, fuller job.

And that’s not where I stop blaming Yates, a director whom I know only from his work on the Potter series; based on those two films, I think I can safely say that while he obviously possesses a keen visual sense and a remarkable affinity for directing actors, he doesn’t have the world’s best sense of storytelling in terms of the broad strokes.  He’s good within a scene; he knows how to visually convey information.  However, I don’t think he’s great at piecing an overall story together.  I was captivated for the entirety of this movie, and yet when it was over, I felt hollow, as if nothing I’d just seen had quite managed to add up.  It’s like I’d had a six-course meal, but was still hungry.

This, I think, is the difference between a competent director and a great director.  A great director — a Spielberg, Hitchcock, Gilliam, Jackson, Eastwood, Kubrick — will have his eye on the movie as a whole.  He might occasionally fail, but more often than not, he won’t.  Maybe Yates will yet prove to be a great director, but in that regard, Half-Blood Prince proves to be a setback.

Enough focusing on the negatives.  This is too good a movie to dwell on the less successful aspects.  I’m frustrated that it’s not a classic, but a movie doesn’t need to be a classic in order for me to enjoy it, and I certainly enjoyed this one.

First of all, the acting is great.  Daniel Radcliffe has grown more comfortable in the role of Harry with each successive film, and this one is no different. I’m not convinced Radcliffe will have much of a career outside of the Potter movies, but he’s going to be forever a star based on those movies alone, and maybe that’s enough.

Emma Watson, who in some of the earlier films was doing extremely mannered work that felt more than a bit lifeless (almost as if the director was acting out what he wanted her to do and then having her replicate it beat for beat), has really grown over the past few films, and she’s great here.  In some ways, it’s a thankless role in this particular movie, since Hermione is doing little more than yearning for Ron and providing moral support for Harry.  However, both of those elements are crucial to making the events of the final book seem inevitable, and that’s likely why they’re given such weight in this film.

It’s hard to say too much about how funny Rupert Grint is as Ron.  He’s hilarious, and while I’d sympathize with someone who said the comedy here is a bit too broad, I wouldn’t agree.

I was also impressed by Bonnie Wright, playing Ginny.  She’s been with the series as long as the rest of the cast, and it appears that the producers struck a bit of gold when casting her.  I’d be curious to know how much weight they put into finding an actress to play Ginny; I’d be willing to bet the answer to this question is entirely dependant upon how much of the story J.K. Rowling knew at that point in time, and whether she indicated to the producers one way or another how important Ginny would become.  Either way, Bonnie Wright was a find.  She’s marvelous.  She hasn’t done a great deal of film work outside of the Potter films, but I’d be willing to bet she’s going to do a lot more.

I’ve got similarly nice things to say about Jessie Cave, who plays Lavender Brown.  Cave, I would argue, steals almost every scene she’s in.  It’s, again, fairly broad comedy, and in some ways it doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the movie.  It’s also hilarious, and my take on the broadness of the Ron/Lavender subplot is that it helps keeps Hermione’s reactions from seeming too maudlin and melodramatic.  And that helps us stay emotionally invested in Hermione’s character arc; as such, Jessie Cave’s role in this film is fairly crucial, and she knocks it out of the park.  I’d love to know how many hours were lost due to people cracking up over her shenanigans as Lavender.

The also-crucial role of Draco Malfoy is also pretty well served in the film, with Tom Felton doing good, troubled work as the young prince of darkness.  Malfoy’s actions — and inactions — in this movie will have serious repercussions over the last two films, and if Felton hadn’t been up to the task, the entire series would have suffered.  But again, it looks as if the producers did well in the extensive casting sessions all those years ago.

As for the adult cast, well, what needs to be said about it other than that it is outstanding?  Michael Gambon leads the way, providing a calm center of wisdom as Dumbledore.  I’m sure the last two films will feature him in some way, but I think they’re going to be notably poorer without his frequent presence.

Alan Rickman, of course, does great work as Snape, and that’s nothing unusual.  Rickman has killed in this role for nearly an entire decade now, and I look forward to seeing some of the meaty scenes he’ll get in Deathly Hallows.

Finally, let’s save some glowing words of praise for Jim Broadbent, who is simply awesome as Horace Slughorn.  Like, Oscar-nomination good.  If one has nothing else kind to say about the Harry Potter films, I think it can at least be said that they’re given some great supporting roles to some very deserving actors, from Rickman to Brendan Gleeson to Imelda Staunton to Broadbent, and those just for a start.  I enjoy the movies for many reasons, and these performances are near the top of the list.

In most other regards, Half-Blood Prince is also top-notch.  It looks great, with lovely cinematography and state-of-the-art visual effects and nice costumes.  “Sumptuous” would probably be a good word to use to describe this film, and the series as a whole.  If I had a complaint, it would be that the movies too often feel a bit too insular; I’d love to get more looks at the broader world — wizarding and muggle alike — of this particular universe.  But that’s a small complaint, and a mostly unfair one; what’s there is one of the best-realized fantasy worlds ever put on film, and it’s one any fan of the genre should probably be thankful for.

My final thoughts on my first viewing of this film is that it’s well worth one’s time.  Maybe not quite the classic it might’ve been, but hey, that’s no crime.  It’s certainly better than most of the competition.

Here’s a hint: it wasn’t Will Ferrell.

(1)  The Hangover ($44.9 million, $13,759 per screen):  In a surprise upset, Sunday estimates pegged Up as the number one film for a second consecutive weekend.  However, in a Shyamalanesque last-scene plot twist, Variety broke the news today that The Hangover had rallied and reclaimed the #1 position thanks to stronger than expected grosses on Sunday.  Man, that’s excitinger than NASCAR!

No matter which position The Hangover occupies, it had a terrific weekend.  In fact, the entire industry seems to be fairly stunned by the movie’s success.  R-rated comedies simply don’t open this strongly very often, and every time they do, it’s big news; everyone loves a surprise.  I’d have to say that if there’s one element of this film’s success that deserves the credit, it’s the trailer campaign.  Those trailers were outstanding, delivering a steady stream of unexpectedly weird (yet totally relatable) humor that got progressively weirder as they went along.  And thus it is that Mike Tyson became one of the deadliest secret weapons unleashed so far this year.

Here’s how to interpret that greater-than-expected Sunday gross, by the way: people are flipping right the fuck out about how much they like this movie.  Personally, I wasn’t quite as impressed, but hey, that’s just me; the rest of the country had a blast, told friends, and will possibly be responsible for this movie having a second weekend at the top of the box-office heap next weekend.

(2)  Up ($44.1 million, $11,561 per screen, $137.2 million total):  Okay, sure, Up might not actually have been number one for the weekend … but don’t let that make this film’s second weekend seem any less impressive.  It’s down only about 35% from its excellent debut, and for a movie doing blockbuster business, that’s outstanding.  The word of mouth seems to be fantastic, which is great news for Pixar’s long-term prospects.  Those more-expensive 3D tickets are helping, and the lack of any direct competition until Ice Age 3 opens on July 1 means that Up has an entire month with the family-film field more or less all to itself.  This movie may turn out to be Pixar’s highest-grossing since Cars, and given how ambivalent certain segments of the industry seemed to be over the movie’s commercial prospects, that would be a major success.

(3)  Land of the Lost ($18.8 million, $5350 per screen):  Ouch.  For as high-profile a movie to open this poorly is disastrous.  Unmitigatedly, career-devastatingly disastrous.  We’re in an era in which a big-business film can easily make twice as much on its opening day; an opening weekend this miniscule is simply not acceptable.  Will Ferrell is likely to find his salary lowered, and his ability to instantly have a project greenlit damaged; director Brad Silberling will have a hard time getting another large budget; and the director of the marketing campaign, if there’s any justice, will be working at a Target.

Part of this seems to have been simple bad luck.  There were two ways the movie could have been sold: as a family-friendly sci-fi adventure or as a satirical absurdist comedy for hipsters.  The latter approach would have been much more accurate to the actual content of the film, and might have at least made the film seem more interesting (with a bit of editing to downplay the plot in some scenes, the movie itself might have been successful on those grounds) … but even then, The Hangover would have annihilated it.  Sold as a family action film, the effects and sets and makeup looked like garbage, and the few bits of humor clean enough to preserve the illusion of family-friendly fun were feeble and unfunny; what family would opt for this over Up and Night at the Museum?

Expect the dropoff next weekend to be in the 70% range, if not more; exhibitors are going to dump this thing as quickly as they are contractually allowed.  The final gross will be less than $50 million, which is possibly even more disappointing a performance for Universal than Warner Bros. had last summer with Speed Racer.

(4)  Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian ($14.6 million, $3844 per screen, $127.3 million total):  Down only about 40% this weekend, the Ben Stiller comedy had a fairly good third weekend.  This is proving to be a strong summer for family movies at the box office … which makes Land of the Lost seem like even more of a bomb.  The museum sequel has still been hit hard by Pixar, but not quite as hard as it appeared last weekend.

(5)  Star Trek ($8.3 million, $2595 per screen, $222.7 million total):  Spending a fifth consecutive weekend in the top five, Star Trek is doing terrific business.  It’s on track to become the highest-grossing of all the Trek movies even with inflation taken into account (adjusted to 2009 dollars, Star Trek: The Motion Picture made roughly $239 million).  That has to be considered a major success for Paramount.

The news isn’t quite as rosy for the movie’s grosses outside of America: internationally, it’s made only about $112 million.  However, the franchise has traditionally performed poorly overseas relative to its domestic performance; the previous high earner in the franchise was Star Trek: First Contact, which earned a mere $57.4 million (or $78 million adjusted).

What does all that mean?  Well, it means that Trek is primarily an American phenomenon.  However, consider this: using the adjusted totals, Star Trek (2009) domestic box-office gross is currently 92.8% as much as the gross for the previous top earner in the series … whereas its international gross is 43.5% more than the previous top earner.  In other words, compared to the previous benchmark for the franchise, the international grosses are actually outpacing the domestic grosses by a substantial margin.  What that says to me is that Paramount has succeeded not only in rejuvenating the series at home, it has succeeded in greatly boosting its international appeal.  From that perspective, the international grosses begin to look rather impressive, which is probably great news for the sequel, provided they can maintain the quality level.

It’s also worth noting that composer Michael Giacchino has three films in the top five this weekend (Up, Land of the Lost, and Star Trek), a significant achievement for anyone working in Hollywood.

(6)  Terminator Salvation ($8.2 million, $2496 per screen, $105.5 million total):  Down 50% this weekend, the slide is easing a bit, but it’s too little, too late.  A bit of good news from the overseas markets: its opening weekend brought in $67.5 million internationally.  It’s at slightly more than $100 million internationally, and great international grosses are the one thing which could potentially save the franchise; if the worldwide total can get to, say, $400 million, then there might yet be another sequel.  Hopefully, it will be without this film’s writers and director.

(7)  Drag Me to Hell ($7 million, $2805 per screen, $28.2 million total):  Down nearly 54% this weekend, which puzzles me a bit.  I felt sure this would be a big word-of-mouth success; after all, what horror fan wouldn’t have had a blast watching this movie?  Can it be that the circa-2009 horror movie audience is composed of idiots who wouldn’t know a good horror movie if it vomited bugs onto their faces?  That’s my theory.  How dreck like The Haunting in Connecticut could post better earnings than Drag Me to Hell is a mystery to me … or is it?  I wonder if this might have something to do with the release date?  Horror films are largely attended by high-school students, and since school is currently out for everyone except those too retarded in their progress to advance to the next grade, might it be that reduced lunchroom gatherings have translated into reduced social planning, and reduced ticket sales for Sam Raimi’s triumphant return to his stomping grounds?  I’m not sure, but it makes as much sense to me as any other theory.  Either way, it was an inexpensive production, and its life on Blu-ray and DVD will be a long one.  The per-screen average is better than both Trek and Terminator, so screen count appears to be an ongoing downside.

(8)  Angels & Demons ($6.5 million, $2239 per screen, $116.1 million total):  Another decent weekend, but it’s close to being played out in America.  It will be hurt by The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 next weekend.  Internationally, though, the movie is up to $293 million, so there’s no question that Sony has produced a hit film worldwide.

(9)  My Life In Ruins ($3.2 million, $2769 per screen):  Opening on less than 1200 screens, the Nia Vardalos romcom was certainly no My Big Fat Greek Wedding (not that that one had a giant opening weekend, either), but its per-screen numbers were better than several of the movies ahead of it on this list.  Fox was crazy to open this movie during the first weekend of June; according to reviews, it’s a shite movie, but if it had opened on some other weekend (preferably not one smack dab in the middle of the summer), then it might have done decent business.  As it is, it’s going to fade fast.

(10)  Dance Flick ($1.9 million, $1147 per screen, $22.6 million total):  Yuck.  I can’t stop writing about this one fast enough.

Elsewhere in box-office news, The Brothers Bloom has now officially failed to find traction in limited release, grossing only $2457 per screen in its fourth weekend (it’s at a bit more than $2 million total, which is weak).

The news might be better for Away We Go.  The Sam Mendes/John Krasinksi/Maya Rudolph dramedy opened on a whopping four screens and averaged $35,750 per; expansion might turn this one into a small-scale summer sleeper, but the slightness of the selling makes that a slippery slope to … climb.

Next weekend: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Imagine That.  I think The Hangover will be #1 again, but Denzel Washington and Pelham might be able to eek one out.  I think it’s going to make $20-25 million, and that Imagine That will be good for only about $11 million.

(10)  Cars

Was there any doubt?  Hands down THE worst Pixar movie, this is still better than all but a small handful of the CGI-animated features all the other studios have ever produced.  (In my opinion, of course.)  Kung Fu Panda is better; that’s one.  Um … um … um … hold on a sec, I feel certain there are others … um … um … oooh!  Bolt!  That one’s better.  Um … oh!  Surf’s Up is better, arguably.  Yep, that’s about it.

So for this to be Pixar’s “worst” movie is hardly an insult.

Truth be told, it’s marvelous, with some of the best animation Hollywood has ever produced, and it seems to have an imaginative hold over small children that is perhaps unparalleled.  I guess I can sympathize with some people not liking certain of the vocie actors (Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, George Carlin, Cheech Marin; all have their detractors), but I like them all, and my goodness, Paul Newman…?  Awesome.

Points off for having the least-inspired music of any Pixar film.  The Randy Newman score is unmemorable, and at least one of the songs — the James Taylor ballad — is nausea-inducingly bad.  A few points returned for use of “Sh-Boom.”

(9)  Up

I think most of the rest of the moviegoing world is a leeeetle more impressed by Up than I was, but don’t take that as an insult against the movie.  It’s an(other) instant classic from the studio.  However, some of the adult content — all of which is exceedingly lovely — feels a bit out of touch with the more fantastical, childish elements.  I mean, really, it’s a little hard to believe that the scene in which Ellie sits in her front yard (eyes closed to the wind, calmly trying to accept the fact that she and Carl can’t have children) exists in the same movie as dogs who pilot fighter planes.

Really, in Up, it’s the sillier elements that feel out of touch with the serious moments.  Weird to say, but it’s true.

However, on their own merits, those silly moments are awfully amusing and satisfying.  My only complaint with Up isn’t much of a complaint: that it doesn’t quite manage to fully work as an entire, complete movie in the way that Pixar’s other movies have.  But who cares?  All of the parts are awesome.

Awesome score by Michael Giacchino, his best to date as of this writing.

(8)  A Bug’s Life

Hilarious, exciting, and beautifully animated, this take-off of Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven had people worried for Pixar prior to its release.  DreamWorks had the similarly-themed Antz in the pipeline at the same time, and rushed it into release several months before Pixar’s film was ready, prompting fears that the showdown between the two would be a serious case of early-bird-gets-the-worm.

Instead, it was a serious case of tortoise-beats-hare; A Bug’s Life got better reviews AND made more money.  It’s also still talked about over a decade later, whereas Antz (an admittedly decent movie), not so much.

A wonderful score by Randy Newman is one of the film’s highlights, and if you don’t love those pill bugs, then go sit in the corner and think about it for a while until you’ve changed your mind.  The voice cast (including Dave Foley, Dennis Leary, and Kevin Spacey) is typically awesome, and those end-credits “bloopers” remain an often-imitated, never-bettered exit plan.

(7  Toy Story

Shocking that the classic Toy Story would be this far down my list, is it?  Stripped of my credibility, am I?  Well, I can live with that, and I stand by my ranking like Joachim stood by Khan even after Kirk blew ‘em all to hell.

Toy Story IS a great movie, there’s no disputing that.  The animation is (still) great, the voiceover work is some of the best animation has ever seen (it remains a signature role for both Tom Hanks and Tim Allen), the Randy Newman songs and score are lovely, the concept is genius, the execution practically flawless.  There is practically nothing bad you can say about this movie, and it single-handedly changed the entire industry.

That’s just how good the next six movies on this list are.

(6)  Ratatouille

Here’s how good Pixar is: they took a movie with a title most people can’t pronounce about a sewer rat who not only spends most of the movie in a kitchen in and around people’s food but BECOMES A GOURMET CHEF and they turned it into a hit.  A BIG hit, at that.  Even in France; hell, especially in France.

What’s next, a charming romance between cockroaches set inside a septic tank?  If Pixar makes it, it stands a decent chance at success.

A great Parisienne score by Michael Giacchino is one of the movie’s many virtues; others include gorgeous animation (particularly the backgrounds), good characters,  and Pixar’s continued refusal to pander by including lowest-common-denominator jokes every ten seconds.

(5)  Toy Story 2

Creating a sequel to a genuine classic is never an easy task, especially when the sequel is mostly unnecessary.  So, of course, leave it to Pixar to make a movie that is not only better than the first, but quite a bit better.  Along with several other 1999 animated releases (such as the classics The Iron Giant and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut), Toy Story 2 was instrumental in convincing the Academy to introduce an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.  After all, there was serious talk of Toy Story 2 receiving an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and if it hadn’t come out during a relatively strong year for movies, it might have happened.

As with all the best sequels, this one doesn’t settle for rehashing the plot of the first film; instead, it takes the themes of the first film and grafts them onto a new story, deepening the meanings that were present initially.  More (most?) importantly, it’s just as entertaining, if not more so, and introduces new characters who fit seamlessly into the mix.  This is all a good omen for Toy Story 3, although the bar is raised so incredibly high that they’ll be forgiven if they can’t quite manage to clear it this time.

(4) WALL*E

Remember the “complaints” I had about Up feeling a bit like two movies that don’t quite mesh together?  Well, a lot of people feel that way about WALL*E, claiming that the silent-film section with WALL*E and EVE is betrayed by the tubbo-humans-in-space resolution.  I can see where they’re coming from.

They’re wrong, of course, as far as I’m concerned.

The whole point of the movie is that WALL*E’s optimism and exuberance and determination are exactly what humanity — not just the ones on the future, but the ones in the present (us, in other words) — needs to avoid ruining the planet.  It’s a heavy topic for a kid’s movie, but who said this was actually a kid’s movie?

Not only is it one of Pixar’s best, it’s one of the best sci-fi movies that’s ever been made.  Some of the animation is so good it’ll make you wonder how it was even possible.  I mean, that CGI Fred Willard looks just like the real thing!

(3)  Monsters, Inc.

With perhaps THE best final shot in movie history (I’ll put it up there against anything, you just bring it right on), Monsters, Inc. was probably marked the moment in time in which Pixar became an entity separate from Disney in the minds of moviegoers.  Toy Story had certainly been primarily seen as a Disney movie, and neither A Bug’s Life nor Toy Story 2 was entirely able to reverse that trend.  By the time Monsters, Inc. left theatres, however, something had changed, and the world has never really looked back.

To think that Shrek got the first Oscar for feature animation instead of this movie makes me want to poo in a box and mail it to someone.  I don’t have Oscar’s address, though, so I might have to settle for sending it to the local newspaper, and I’m just not sure how effective that would be.

Aided once again by an excellent Randy Newman score, this movie has everything: laughs, thrills, even a couple of very mild scares.  The chase inside the door factory remains one of the best action set pieces ever committed to film; it’s good enough that you can imagine Spielberg and Cameron nodding their heads in appreciation.

(2)  Finding Nemo

Pixar’s biggest hit, this undersea tale hits all the right notes on every count: Thomas Newman’s score is a classic, the voice cast is terrific (especially Albert Brooks and Ellen Degeneres), the colors are vibrant as vibrant can be without being in a movie titled Speed Racer, the story is exciting and touching and sentimental without being gooey.

The mind shudders to think how many times the word “mine!” has been blurted out by the people who have seen this movie.

Pixar might have lost the first Oscar for Best Animated Feature, but they won on their second nomination, with this movie … and they’ve only lost one since.

(1)  The Incredibles

It may be my inherent love of superhero movies coming through, but I do think this is marginally the best movie Pixar has yet made.  (Although really, any one of my top seven is a strong contender.)

This was the first time Pixar had really tried to tackle animating humans as their primary characters, and there was every possiblity that it might end up not working.  Well, so much for that fear.

The Incredibles remains the best superhero (or comic-book-inspired, if you’d prefer that designation) film ever made.  And yes, I am including The Dark Knight, which is a great, great movie; this one is better.  The superhero action makes a great argument for the future of an entirely CGI-based film industry.  It’ll never happen, and probably shouldn’t, but if Pixar and other similarly talented companies were running the show, and they could come up with action movies as good as this one, I’d be all for it.  (And both Up and WALL*E prove that animation is perfectly capable of delivering drama as well as “real” movies.)

Sure, certain elements of The Incredibles seem to be cribbed from Marvel’s Fantastic Four and from DC’s Watchmen, but that’s okay.  Because in postmodernism, that sort of thing is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged.  And make no mistake about it: though it’s also quite traditional in its plotting, this is very much a postmodernist, deconstructionist take on superheroes.  The fact that kids seem to have either picked up on that and accepted it or just sailed right over it without a bump speaks awfully well of Brad Bird.

Bird also lays down some excellent refferences to the supervillainy of the more cartoonish James Bond movies (!), and he does it better than all of them do it.

The movie also benefits tremendously from an awesome score by Michael Giacchino, who here provides the best John Barry score John Barry never wrote.

Where is my sequel?

Final Thoughts

Pixar is truly on a streak unlike any other in cinematic history.  I’m well aware that not every viewer loves each of their movies, but plenty of viewers — and critics alike — do love each of them, and each movie has extremely ardent admirers of all ages; there is no other filmmaking entity out there that has put together that type of track record.

Perhaps most importantly, Pixar is making films that are bound to last from one generation to the next, making film lovers out of millions of children every year.

There’s no telling how much longer this streak can continue, but it certainly shows no signs of ending any time soon, and every film fan should be very grateful for that.

Spoilers!

You just know that sooner or later, Pixar is going to put out an inferior product.  Yeah, sure, I know … some of you are saying “they already did, it was called Cars!”

Well, you’d be wrong about that.

And you’d also probably be wrong to think that Pixar is EVER going to put out an inferior product.  Because if Up isn’t it, it’s probably never going to happen.

This is a movie that really shouldn’t work at all: it’s kinda like a mix of Crystal Skull-style cartoon action set pieces with Benjamin Button-style pathos, but better than both put together.  Sounds crazy, right?  Right you are.  And did I mention the talking dogs that fly fighter planes?  That sounds like a recipe for disaster, but instead, it’s yet another classic from the folks at Pixar.

The movie begins with what is possibly the best sequence in the company’s history (which is saying something): young Carl Fredricksen, a fan of noted adventurer C.W. Muntz, meets Ellie, a fire-haired ball of energy who shares his interest in Muntz and his tales of Paradise Falls; they grow up, fall in love, get married, learn they can’t have children, grow old, and death does them part.  This opening segment is utterly involving; I’m tempted to call it perfect, and probably would if I believed perfection was possible (it isn’t).  Mostly played out via montage and free of dialogue, the sequence could have been maudlin and cloying; instead, it’s a better piece of romantic drama (and tragedy) than 99 out of 100 tragic romantic dramas would be capable of achieving.

You listening, Benjamin Button?  This is how that sort of thing is done.

I can sympathize with the people who are going to make the claim that the movie is all downhill from that point.  They aren’t entirely incorrect, if you look at the film from a certain point of view.  The opening sequence is a masterpiece of realism (whimsical realism, granted, but realism nonetheless), and the rest of the movie takes some strange, if amusing, turns into silliness and escapism.  The opening is so grounded, so emotionally charged, that you can imagine even the hardened hearts at Cannes having to dab at their eyes with their ascots.  How they took to the spectacle of talking dogs, giant birds, and a house that flies to South America using scores of helium balloons … well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt a little bit betrayed by it all, having been temporarily lulled into forgetting that they were watching a “mere” cartoon.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if parents and their children felt a little bit betrayed by the opening sequence, but were enraptured by the rest of the film.

And if this movie has a problem, I think that’s it.  As great a movie as I think it is, I also think that its two wildly divergent tones are going to fail to gel for a lot of people.  To a lesser extent, WALL*E had the same “problem”; all movies should be so unlucky as to have that problem, but audiences didn’t embrace WALL*E quite as fervently as critics embraced it, and I suspect the same thing will happen on a larger scale with Up.

For me, though, it all fits together relatively well, with the movie’s overriding tone and theme being one of acceptance, optimism, and rejuvenation; the sillier elements are silly, it’s true, but they are there to keep the whole thing from becoming too dark and heavy to stay afloat, and as such, they are probably essential.  It’s all neatly summarized by the central image the marketing has been employing: a house being held aloft by balloons.

It’s a rich image on its own accord, and it’s even richer once you know what the house actually represents: it represents love, and not just any old love, but a very specific love, the love between Carl and his deceased wife.  It represents the existence of their love (which, apparently, flourished for decades), which can never truly die; it also represents the nonexistence of their love, which, in some regards, died with Ellie and can never return in a literal sense; and it also represents the rejuvenation of that love through both Carl’s attempts to fulfill their childhood desires and Ellie’s posthumous advice to Carl to find “a new adventure.”

That love, in essence, is what the entire movie is about.  It is THE motivating force behind every single action Carl takes, and Carl’s obsession with honoring that love is mirrored in some way by all of the film’s other major characters: Russell is obsessed with getting his final merit badge so that he can earn his father’s love; “Kevin” (a rare species of bird) is obsessed with getting back to her children and feeding them; Dug the dog is obsessed first by capturing Kevin, and then by helping Carl, because he is trying to please his masters.  Even C.W. Muntz, who turns out to be a villain, is obsessed with capturing Kevin so that he can return to society and re-earn their love, which he feels he has long since lost.

Running underneath all of this is a slam-dunk of a score by Michael Giacchino, who turns in his second great score of May 2009 (Star Trek was the other) and his third great score for Pixar (he also composed The Incredibles and Ratatouille).  Giacchino’s work here is based on one theme: a love theme for Carl and Ellie, which works wonders during the opening sequence as a piano piece and reappears throughout the film, sometimes in the same sad-piano guise, but sometimes reorchestrated into action music.  Over the opening credits, it turns into a breezy jazz version.  This is the type of thing John Williams once did (and still occasionally does when he comes out of retirement) with seeming effortlessness, and if Giacchino continues to do work this impressive, then we may have a new heir apparent for the title of Best Working Film Composer.

I’ve been talking too much about how Serious and Important this movie is, and I’m not wrong, but I’d be remiss in my duties if I didn’t talk about how funny the movie is.  There isn’t nearly as much “lookit the funny old man” humor as you might expect; there’s a little, but mostly, the film gets its yuks from strange plot developments.  One of the best comes when Carl has a daydream about dropping Russell to the city streets below; what a strange moment for a kid’s movie!  Another laugh comes from Carl as a child falling through a hole in the floor and breaking his arm.  Haw-haw!

The strangest development of all, of course, comes when the talking dogs are introduced.  To be fair, they don’t actually talk; no, they wear collars that somehow translate their thoughts into human speech.  This is just as weird as it sounds.

And yet, Pixar is able to keep it grounded by giving the dogs personalities and actions which will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever owned a dog.  Dug may have a talking collar, but when he sees — or thinks he sees — a squirrel, he’s instantly distracted.  (One of my favorite bits in the movie is when Dug decides to tell Carl and Russell a joke.  It goes something like this: “A squirrel walks up to a tree and says it is winter and I have not gathered any nuts and now I am dead.  It is a funny joke because the squirrel gets dead.”  If you don’t laugh at Dug’s delivery of this joke, then fuck you; you don’t deserve to laugh.)

All of the dogs move like real dogs, and except for the cartoon-faced Dug, they all look like real dogs; if you told me Marley in Marley and Me was a CGI creation by Pixar, I’d probably believe you.  This extreme attention to detail reminds me of the kinds of things Disney animation under Walt himself accomplished in movies like Snow White and Dumbo and (especially) Bambi; the animals were cartoons, yes, and sometimes cartoonish, but they were also real.  That mix of reality and unreality is something animation can do that no other art form can; and Pixar, as a company, is a master at it.  This is how it is able to get away with having dogs serve wine and fly fighter planes.

And when the dogs-flying-fighter-planes sequence (they steer and fire by biting rubber squeeze toys!) is brought to an end by Russell hollering “squirrel!” and pointing at the ground, well, somehow, I believe it would work that way.

Every moment of such silliness is earned, both by virtue of it being funny in its own right, and by the presence of some serious moment to balance things out.  The dogs might have parachutes strapped to their backs (hilarious!), but when C.W. Muntz falls out of Carl’s floating house, he falls to his death.  That’s how this movie goes; it’s a constant high-wire act, and Pixar (under the capable direction of Pete Docter and Bob Petersen, both of whom also wrote the movie) makes it to the other side with barely a hitch.

Like all of Pixar’s movies, this is is jam-packed with details, but I think I’ve written enough about the movie for now.  It’s eminently enjoyable, and while I’m not convinced it’s going to be received as rapturously as, say, Finding Nemo or The Incredibles, I think it’s safe to say that Pixar is now officially ten-for-ten.  At what point do we have to start looking through the history books to find out if ANY company in the entire history of cinema has managed to make ten consecutive movies as good great as Pixar’s first ten?  I think that moment may have come.  I can’t think of a single director who managed it; I can’t think of a single star who managed it, either.  And studios…?  Don’t make me laugh.

I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to suggest that Pixar’s ten-film stretch might be the most significant string of successes in film history.  If I’m wrong, then by all means, point me toward the truth; because I promise you, I’d LOVE to see the string of movies better than this one has been.

Before I go, I’d like to offer up a few parting words of praise for Partly Cloudy, the short which runs before Up.  It’s yet another classic Pixar short (throw all the short fimls into the mix and Pixar’s streak becomes even more daunting), and it actually deepens the feature that follows it.  Set in the sky, where the clouds fashion babies out of thin air and hand them over for delivery to an army of storks, Partly Cloudy is, simply, awesome.  There’s more that could be said about it, but really, what would the point be?

Oscar, you’d better be paying attention this year come Best Animated Short time.

The best thing I can say about J.J. Abrams’ stupendously entertaining Star Trek is that I saw it twice in one day, and not only did I enjoy it more the second time than I did the first, but I could very happily have seen it again the next day.  It is a remarkable piece of entertainment, one that is likely to make Trekkies out of millions of people who could not, with a gun pressed to their temples, tell a Cardassian from a Kazon.  (Yeah, that’s right, I dropped a Voyager reference, whatcha got ta say about it?  Incidentally, alternate comparisons considered include: Bajoran from a Betazed, Maquis from a Mugato, Tribble from a Talaxian, android from an Andorian, and holodeck from a Horta.)

And for the millions who already were Trekkies (Kirk doesn’t believe in no-win scenarios, and I don’t believe in the word “Trekkers”), it’s likely to prove a source of heated debate for decades to come, with some most loving it and a very, very vocal minority carping about the many ways in which it deviates from the previous incarnations of the franchise.

Therein lies my difficulty.  Do I critique this movie on its own merits, or do I critique this movie as a shiny new coat of paint on an old, well-loved car?

Well, Honk Mahfah isn’t known for holding back, so the answer, of course, is “fuck that, I’m doin’ both.”  Hence the “part 1 of 2″ in the title.

This particular review is going to focus on the movie as a standalone piece of entertainment.  I can’t swear that I won’t stray off-course ever so slightly and start talking about previous episodes and movies, but I’m going to try hard not to.

A couple of summers ago, when Transformers came out and was greeted with the sort of wild enthusiasm that a shark shows for a bleeding leg, I went on many a rant trying to convince people that no, seriously, that wasn’t the best movie you’ve ever seen, it was passable at best and insulting to your intelligence at worst.  “Chill out,” I’d get told; “it’s just a movie, and it was fun.”  Yeah, okay, I’d reply, but it didn’t have to suck.  It’s perfectly possible to make a big, effects-driven popcorn flick that manages to be fun and substantial at the same time; I should know, I saw many of them back in the day, and still occasionally see one (last summer brought at least two in Iron Man and The Dark Knight).

Well, here comes Star Trek to help prove my point.  Not by any means perfect on a storytelling level, this movie is close to perfect on an entertainment level, and if the box-office gods are smiling, it’s going to put many a butt in many a seat this summer, and sell many a tub of popcorn covered in butter-flavored goo to help make all those butts ever so slightly larger.

Ironically, the movie was written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also wrote Transformers. Star Trek, however, has at least one powerful weapon that Transformers didn’t have: J.J. Abrams.  Abrams began his Hollywood career as a screenwriter on projects such as Regarding Henry, Forever Young, and Armageddon, but he came into his prime on television, creating or co-creating Felicity, Alias, and Lost.  He directed episodes of all of those series, and when Lost became a cultural phenomenon during its first season — thanks in no small part to the Abrams-directed pilot, as good a first episode as network television has ever seen — he was tapped by Tom Cruise to take over the directing chores on the long-gestating Mission: Impossible III.

In Star Trek, his second feature as a director, Abrams showcases a very cinematic visual flair, but he also retains some small-screen virtues: the ability to work well with an ensemble cast is one, and a keen sense of pacing is another.  Those elements combine with Abrams’ now fully-formed visual sense to create a truly spectacular piece of entertainment.

We begin by seeing some sort of strange, whirling metal, which as the camera pulls back is gradually revealed to be a passing starship, the Kelvin, which has been dispatched by Starfleet to investigate strange gravity fluctuations, or some such nonsense.  They discover what appears to be a black hole, with what appears to be a ship emerging from it, and they make the fatal mistake of not doing what any sensible starship would do upon seeing something coming out of a fucking black hole: they don’t immediately head at top speed in the opposite direction.  Truthfully, the captain doesn’t get much of a chance to turn tail and run, because this ship — a Romulan ship, the Narada, which looks like something straight out of hell — more or less immediately begins blowing the Kelvin into tiny bits.

The Narada hails the Kelvin, and a pointy-eared tattooed fellow tells the captain to get himself into a shuttle and head on over, which he does, but not before promoting one Lieutenant Kirk to captain and ordering him to wait fifteen minutes to see what happens; if bad things are afoot, his orders are to get the crew evacuated, set the ship for a collision course, and rip this powerful new enemy a new one.  Kirk, huh?  Eeeeenteresting.

The captain, of course, gets killed, but not before the Romulans try and get him to tell them where they can find Ambassador Spock.  He’s no help, and is even less help with a chest full of metal.  The Narada begins hammering the Kelvin again, and Captain Kirk Sr. orders the evacuation of the crew.  Among the crew: his pregnant wife.  She looks like Dr. Cameron from House, which might also explain why she is a good actress.  Most movies would have lousy actors in small roles like these, but she is great, and so is the guy playing Kirk Sr., and so is the captain of the Kelvin.  (Abrams also brought over from his television work an insanely good casting sense.)

Captain Kirk Sr. discovers that autopilot has been disengaged, and that the only way to save the departing shuttlecraft is for him to manually take the Kelvin into a collision course.  This, of course, means he will never get to see his baby boy, who is named Jim during the final few moments of his father’s life.

Now, that’s touching enough just as a bunch of words, but on the screen, it’s instantly a classic scene.  The camerawork is hectic and realistic, and even when you see a bug-eyed alien nurse, she feels like a real character, because the camera doesn’t dwell on her; it doesn’t scream at you “Hey, lookit the goofy alien!”, it just glances at her for a moment and then looks away.  Abrams drops the sound effects away and lets composer Michael Giacchino take over, and if you don’t get choked up during this scene, then you stand a great chance of being accepted to the Vulcan Science Academy.

The Kelvin, of course, crashes into the Romulan vessel, wounding her badly enough for the crew to make their getaway.  The sequence ends with a gorgeous shot of the Romulan ship burning from the damage and listing to one side while the shuttlecraft, silhouetted against a sun, flee from it.  Giacchino’s score is awesome during this scene, also.

The significance of this opening sequence is that it tells you right up front that what’s going to be important in this movie is people.  Yes, the action is thrilling; yes, the CGI is great, and the sound effects are cool.  But what matters is the emotion of that birth, and the sad fact that it has to be bought by a sacrifice.  You may also note — even though nobody at any point says anything to tip it off — that what Captain George Kirk does is imminently logical.

We next get introduced to young Jim Kirk, who has at some point become an auto thief, and to young Spock, who starts a fight with some young Vulcan toughs who apparently have nothing better to do than give him shit about having a “human whore” for a mother.  (Those young Vulcan toughs are one of the least effective parts of the movie; they seem like they’re just kids in makeup, who would rather be playing Rock Band than filming roles for this doofy movie.)

Cut to Spock all growed up, and he’s still taking shit over his mom: this time from the Vulcan Science Academy, who applaud him for overcoming his difficulty, i.e., his mother.  They’re basically a bunch of racist dicks, and Spock tells ‘em thanks but no thanks, he’s heading for Starfleet.

So, what you get from this sequence is the idea that Kirk and Spock are both troublemakers.  Why is Kirk being such a tool?  It’s not clear; we can probably assume that it’s due to having no father, since the uncle who calls him on the phone — glad to see Nokia made it through the recession all the way to the 23rd century — sounds like a bit of a turd.  But who cares about Kirk’s motivations for stealing that car?  As for Spock, well, he’s obviously a momma’s boy, but also one who knows when to stop taking it and start aiming for the teeth, so he’s obviously got our sympathy from the get-go.

We next catch up with Kirk in a bar, where a bunch of Starfleet cadets-to-be are partying like it’s 2999.  He’s — understandably — trying to get one of these cadets, Uhura, to sneak away with him for a game of dock-the-shuttle, but she’s having none of it, and some red-shirted thugs whoop on his ass a little bit to show him how dedicated they are to peacekeeping and humanitarianism.  Captain Pike breaks it up, finds out who Kirk is, and tries to talk him into enlisting.  Kirk is scornful, but thinks about it a bit, and realizes that Starfleet is exactly what he wants to do. Thankfully, there isn’t an elderly Momma Kirk hanging around for Kirk to talk to about all of this for five minutes before deciding to take off; Abrams avoids all of those cliches, and whatever is going on in Jim’s head stays right there.  Many a reviewer has pointed out the similarity between this and the seminal Luke-stares-at-the-binary-sunset moment in Star Wars, and I’ll join them.  Unlike them, I’ll add why it’s effective: because it isn’t overexplained, it not only allows but practically begs us to put ourselves in Kirk’s shoes, to imprint our own feelings onto the scene.  That’s what cinema is all about: that entry into another person’s point of view builds strong bonds between audience and film.  This is an approach Spielberg has also often used to great effect, and Abrams pulls it off several times without seeming to even strain himself.  That’s a good sign for his cinematic future.

Captain Pike has told Kirk he could become an officer in four years; Kirk, upon joining, tells him he’ll do it in three.  Cut to space, and the title card “Three Years Later.”  Subtle.  But instead of Kirk, we see Nero, who has apparently been waiting around doing nothing for a long time.  He’s been waiting on Spock to emerge from the same black hole from which he himself emerged; Spock does, and Nero orders his ship captured.  This can lead to nothing good.

But back on Earth, sure enough, Kirk seems to be making satisfactory progress at Starfleet Academy — especially when it comes to picking up Orion women — but there’s something bothering him: his inability to pass the Kobayashi Maru test.  It’s a no-win scenario involving being stuck between angry Klingon warships and a civilian freighter whose crew needs evacuating.  This scenario has some vague similarities to the situation George Kirk faced when he died saving the crew of the Kelvin, and it seems likely that this is in Jim Kirk’s mind when he reprograms the test so that he can win.  Again, none of that is made explicit, not even a little bit; instead, the scene is played for laughs, and once again does a great job of empathetically putting us in Kirk’s shoes.  Uhura, who previously caught Kirk making time with her green-skinned roommate, is especially spiteful, and Kirk is especially cocky, and the scene gets some big laughs.

Kirk gets brought before the Academy Supreme Court or some similar board to answer the charges of having cheated.  Apparently, it’s a rule that whenever a cadet gets brought up on charges, the rest of the Academy’s cadets have to be in attendance, which seems like a bit of a waste of good class time.  Tyler Perry shows up to (convincingly) play the head of the Academy, and he brings out Spock, who was the programmer of the Kobayashi Maru test, to confront Kirk.  Things don’t seem to be going too well for Jim when somebody walks in and informs the Academy that Vulcan has issued a distress call.  The entire fleet is apparently away on business elsewhere, so the cadets are all dismissed and assigned to starships and dispatched to the relief effort.  They don’t know what they’re relieving, but they’re prepared for anything.

Kirk’s name isn’t called out when assignments are handed down, and he’s bummed, so McCoy makes him sick with a shot and gets him onto the Enterprise on the grounds of needing medical attention.  Meanwhile, Uhura has been assigned to the Farragut, but bullies Spock into putting her aboard the Enterprise.  Seems like that’s the place to be.

It’s being led by Captain Pike, who has a fresh-faced Russian crewman named Chekov inform the crew — via video displays hung throughout the ship — what they know about what’s happening on Vulcan.  It’s not much, but Kirk recognizes some of the descriptions of lightning-like effects as being similar to effects described on the day his father died.  He intuits, somewhat improbably, that the same ship has reappeared and is attacking Vulcan, and that the Enterprise is heading straight into a trap.  Pike is initially dismissive, and so is Spock, but Uhura sets them straight: the day before, Kirk, oddly attentive while in the middle of being cockblocked, had overheard Uhura talking to her roommate about having intercepted a Klingon transmission involving a devastating attack on a prison planet.  She’s persuasive, and everyone decides to believe Kirk’s wild hypothesis.

Good thing, too, because the second they come out of warp drive, the rest of their fleet — which is now in little pieces — greets them.  (The only reason they weren’t there to be blown away is that Sulu forget to take off the ship’s parking brakes when putting the ship into warp; convenient.)  The Narada incapacitates the Enterprise, and Nero tells Pike to come aboard.  Uh-oh; we know how that tends to end.

Meanwhile, the Romulan ship has lowered a mining platform into the atmosphere of Vulcan, and is using a beam of some sort to burn into the core of the planet.  Pike takes Kirk, Sulu, and Chief Engineer Olsen — who is dressed in a lovely red spacesuit — with him on his shuttlecraft, and dumps them off along the way; they do a space jump onto the mining platform, which they intend to disable so that communications and transporter use can be reestablished.  Olsen’s red suit serves him poorly; he dies immediately.  Kirk and Sulu kick some Romulan ass and disable the platform.

Meanwhile, Pike is taken prisoner, and Nero puts a creature into his body which will force him to give up Starfleet defense codes.  Nero orders the “red matter” be dropped into Vulcan’s core.  This red matter is nasty stuff; it creates a singularity — that’s a black hole to the layman — which will consume the entire planet within a matter of minutes.  Spock, understandably distressed, beams down to the surface of the planet to rescue his mother and father.  His mother is lost when the ground gives out beneath her and the transporter loses the lock on her.

This is one of the most effective scenes in the movie, and it’s one which promises to have major implications for future sequels.  It establishes both Spock and his father as members of an endangered species.  It also prompts one of the movie’s big revelations, which is that Spock and Uhura are romantically involved.  She tries to comfort the obviously-grieving man, but has little success.

The Romulan ship takes off, leaving the Enterprise to flee from the imploding planet, with Spock in the captain’s seat.  He orders the ship to set course for the rest of the fleet, but Kirk wants to take the fight to the Romulans, and is very vocal in his opinions.  Spock doesn’t want to hear it, and orders security to put Kirk in an escape pod, and strand him on a nearby ice planet where there is a Starfleet outpost.

Kirk flees from a giant ice monster, and encounters Elderly Spock — or, as he’s billed in the credits, “Spock Prime” — who drops a big fat bunch of exposition through a mind meld.  He’s Spock from the future, and in that future, he fails to save Romulus from a supernova.  Nero therefore blames both Vulcan and the Federation for the destruction of his homeworld, and intends the worst type of revenge. Nero has stranded Spock on this planet so that he can see the destruction of Vulcan.  Apparently, the two planets are so close together that Spock can see the implosion of the world without any type of telescopic aid, but not so close that the gravitational effects of an entire planet going missing would be felt.  That’s not entirely believable, is it?

Spock Prime and Kirk head out for the Federation outpost, where they find Scotty and a weird dwarf alien who likes to climb on top of things.  Spock gives Scotty an equation for transwarp beaming — using the transporter over long distances to beam people onto ships moving at warp speed — which the engineer will create in the future.  Kirk and Scotty beam themselves onto the Enterprise, where Kirk, following Spock Prime’s advice, angers Spock the younger so much that Spock nearly chokes him to death, thereby activating a highly convenient clause in Starfleet regulations stating that officers who become emotionally compromised must be removed from active command duty.  Nobody seems to remember, or care, that Kirk is chasing down his own father’s killer; no way he’s emotionally compromised.

Now in command of the ship — Pike had, implausibly, promoted him to first officer before taking off for the Romulan ship — Kirk orders pursuit of the enemy vessel, which is headed for Earth, presumably to destroy it.  Communications, apparently, are not active.  Chekov comes up with a plan, and is able to get the ship to Saturn in a way that avoids detection by the Romulans.  Scotty then beams Kirk and Spock — who talks for a minute to his father and then is apparently fit for duty again — over to the Romulan ship.

Kirk and Spock fuck up a few Romulans, then Spock takes off in Spock Prime’s captured spaceship, which — despite housing all of the red matter — is left unguarded.  Okay, then, if you folks say so.  Meanwhile, Kirk frees Pike.  Pike must have puked up that mind-controlling bug; he seems fine now.  Spock plays a game of chicken with the Narada, and smashes it with the remainder of the red matter.  As you might suspect, this creates a whole bunch of little black holes that quickly grow into a larger black hole.  The Romulans are sucked into it; Kirk offers to help them (much to Spock’s consternation), but they refuse, and nobody seems to mind giving them a helping hand into the black hole by firing all weapons at them.

The Enterprise barely escapes the black hole; they can only get away by Scotty ejecting the ship’s warp core, which causes a shockwave that pushes the ship free.  IT PUSHES THE SHIP FREE OF A FUCKING BLACK FUCKING HOLE. I guess that whole “nothing escapes a black hole’s gravity” thing doesn’t apply to antimatter.  If you say so, fellas; if you say so.

Back at Starfleet Academy, Pike gets promoted to Admiral, and Kirk gets promoted to Captain of the Enterprise, all wrongdoing in the Kobayashi Maru incident apparently forgiven.  With that, the Enterprise sets off on its next mission.

You can probably tell from all the snark that there are plot holes in this thing big enough for the Death Star to fly through, but honestly, who gives a shit?  Not me, that’s for sure.  Most of the plot “problems” can at least kinda be rationalized.  For example, why is it that Kirk ends up marooned on Delta Vega in basically the exact same position as Spock Prime?  If you want, you can make the argument that — unlike on the current season of Lost – changes can be made to the timeline … but when changes are made, the timeline will work to restore as much of the original timeline as it can.  This is an argument for a type of predestination, and it’s not dealt with in the movie as such, but certain scientific theories can at least tenuously back up such claims.

Either way, the sheer entertainment value of this movie will soldier all but THE most prone to nitpicking past all the plot problems and inconsistencies.  So much is going on here, visually, that you’d have to be an enormous grump to not be carried away by it.  The film practically bursts with gorgeous designs; the CGI is terrific; the acting, across the board, is memorable; there is a lot of fun dialogue; the score by Michael Giacchino (who did great work on The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Speed Racer, as well as each episode of Lost) is excellent.  We go to movies to be carried away by visceral storytelling like this.

Here is a movie that deals with serious issues, such as loss, abandonment, and the triumph of persistence over those setbacks, but it does so without becoming heavy-handed or grim.  It’s been a long decade, and like another space-opera blockbuster of yore — not Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but Star Wars, which similarly came along during substantially troubled times — J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek might be delivering to American audiences a heaping helping of fun just when they need it the most.

Ain’t-It-Cool has rectified that, with a report from ScoreKeeper focusing entirely upon the music.  It’s an extremely positive review that makes me even more excited to see the film than I already was.

Giacchino is a star on the rise in Hollywood.  He’s been providing the score for each episode of Lost since its premiere, and on the big screen he’s been responsible for the outstanding scores for The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Speed Racer.

In addition to Star Trek, this summer will see new Giacchino scores for both Up and Land of the Lost.

The Star Trek soundtrack is available for pre-order here.