Review: Sing

Normally I don't review movies until after they come out on home video, but today I went to the free advance screening of the upcoming Illumination Studios animated movie "Sing".


"Sing" is the last of the 12 animated talking animals movies that came out this year. I didn't even bother watching any of the trailers until the third one (above). That trailer, I think, is one of the best trailers of the year.

All of the cast were great, but the highlight of the movie was Reese Witherspoon as Rosita, the mother of 25 piglets. We know that Reese is a talented singer from her Academy Award winning role as June Carter Cash in "Walk the Line", but once again she makes the songs she sings even better than the originals. Katy Perry's "Firework" and Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" are not only tolerable, but enjoyable when Reese sings them. Singing from Taron Egerton and Scarlett Johansson were pleasant surprises.

Yes, the movie was written with "The Big Book of Movie Cliches" and was somewhat predictable. Yes, it has unnecessary flatulence for cheap laughs. But it is a movie that kids will love and their parents and older siblings will enjoy as well. If the kids are too young to see "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" then "Sing" is an acceptable alternative.

Score: 8/10.

Review: God's Not Dead (2014)

I have been trying for almost 20 months to write a review of the movie “God’s Not Dead”. The movie has so many flaws that to address each one in-depth I would end up writing a book. In trying to keep this review brief I will only be hitting the highlights.

I am going to start with story first. All of the characters are one-dimensional/stereotypes. The chronology doesn’t make sense. It took me until the fifth time watching the movie to realize the events begin on a Wednesday and not a Monday. Then, Rev. Dave’s secretary informs him he can have lunch with Mina on Friday, but their lunch scene does not take place until the following Monday. And there are too many characters with sub-plots.

The biggest story problem is the main one: Josh vs. Radisson. Even if a professor would allow a student to present a differing viewpoint in his class, the student should not take the bait. Prof. Radisson was making the claim that “God is dead”. The burden of proof was on him, and he made it clear that he did not want to teach why he believed what he believed. Instead, Radisson shifts the burden of proof to Josh. Josh should respectfully point out that Radisson has the burden of proof, instead of falling for “The Professor’s Ploy”.

The "professor's ploy" is to shift the burden of proof from himself to someone else. He demands that others defend views they have not expressed even though he is the one who has made specific claims. He tries to sidestep his responsibility, but the burden of proof is still his.

Gregory Koukl, "Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions", p. 67

Once Josh begins his presentations, he make many errors. For this review I am only going to address two that he makes in his first lesson.

He begins by saying, “[T]he only way to debate this issue is to look at the available evidence, and that is what we're going to do. We are going to put God on trial, with Professor Radisson as the prosecutor, and me as the defense attorney, and you as the jury.” I could write many paragraphs about what is wrong with those statements, but the bottom line is that God is the judge of sinners not the other way around.

Next, Josh tries to fit the atheistic myth of the “Big Bang” with the Christian account of creation in Genesis 1. There are many reasons why Christians should not accept the “Big Bang” fairy tale.

Again, this is only briefly looking at some of the problems I have with “God’s Not Dead”.

For additional information, I recommend my editorial “God's Not Dead: Advice for Christian Students”, the websites ProofThatGodExists.org and AnswersInGenesis.org, and the books “Tactics” by Greg Kokul and “The Ultimate Proof of Creation” by Dr. Jason Lisle.

“God’s Not Dead” has a BBM MGS grade of 5/10, and a BBM CMGS grade of 7/12.

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

"Star Trek Into Darkness" is the worst Star Trek movie ever. At least according to die-hard Trekkers. But "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a really good movie, despite the fact that it has a terrible story.

The movie begins in the middle of an action scene, so characters are forced to say awkward expositional statements in their dialogue in order to catch up the audience. Despite that, the movie starts off strong for about the first half-hour. Then everything goes wrong. I have read and watched a lot of reviews for the movie, and I have not seen anybody point out the major story flaw I am about to point out.

At the 29-minute mark, Kirk breaks down over Admiral Pike's dead body. Clearly he is emotionally compromised. And what did the previous movie establish about being emotionally compromised?

Spock Prime: [Regulation] Six-one-nine states that any command officer who's emotionally compromised by the mission at hand must resign said command.

A major plot point of "Star Trek" was that Kirk had to show that Spock was emotionally compromised so that Kirk could take control of the Enterprise. And yet, when Kirk became emotionally compromised, he was given command of the Enterprise anyway, and nobody objected. I have gone ahead to rewrite three scenes the way they should have happened. (My additions are in italics):

Bones: Where were you?
Kirk: For what?
Bones: Your medical exam. Ten hours ago you were in a firefight. Now it's my duty as ship's...
Kirk: I'm fine, Bones.
Bones: The hell you are. You have been emotionally compromised and are no longer fit for duty.
Kirk: I'm fine.
-----Spock: Captain. Thank you for requesting my reinstatement. As I am again your First Officer, it is now my duty to inform you that you are emotionally compromised and advise that you should relinquish your command.
-----Uhura: Captain! I'm so sorry about Admiral Pike.
Kirk: We all are.
Uhura: Are you okay?
Kirk: Fine, thank you, Lieutenant.
Uhura: Captain, I know that you were close with the admiral. And I know it isn't my place to say this, but I think that you may be emotionally compromised.
Kirk: You are right, Lieutenant. It isn't your place. Now, tell me all the intimate details about your relationship with Spock.

If all three attempts didn't work there should have been a non-mutinous way for his crew to hold an intervention for him. But all of his crew just let him make some very bad decisions when any of them could have stopped it.

The next big problem was the villain. It was no surprise that the villain turned out to be Khan. In November of 2009, I went on the IMDb page for the "Untitled Star Trek Sequel" before any official information had been released about the movie. All it had for the cast was "Nestor Carbonell - Khan (rumored)"¹. That was wrong. By the time that the movie was finally written and ready to into pre-production, Benecio Del Toro was rumored to be cast as the villain, and speculation again was that Khan would be the villain. In the end, Benedict Cumberbatch was cast as John Harrison.

I had hoped that the new Star Trek movie would have an original villain like the previous movie had. There was no reason for Khan to be in the second movie of the new continuity just because he was in the original second movie. And essentially he wasn't truly Khan. Just because the timeline was changed sometime around Kirk's birth does not mean that the changes would go back to the 1940s-1990s to change Khan from a Mexican-Indian to a British-Indian.

But the biggest problem with Khan Harrison was that he is the most honest movie villain since Satan in "Suing the Devil". Seriously, every single thing Khan says is true. He does not try to manipulate anybody through deception. He saves Uhura, Kirk, and Spock from Klingons, he willingly surrenders to them, he reveals his motivation to Kirk and shares that Admiral Marcus is the real bad guy, and Khan only really becomes evil once Marcus was taken out and he had a position of power. Khan Noonien Singh is considered the greatest Star Trek villain, but Khan Harrison is not.

The final problem I am going to bring up is really a minor nitpick. At the end of the movie, Kirk recites the "Space. The Final Frontier." monologue as the "Captain's Oath". I have no idea how that counts as an oath. There is no promise anywhere in those words. That just bugs me.

Even though the majority of the story logically shouldn't have happened, the story was created to serve the villain instead of the other way around, and the writers couldn't think of a clever way to work the "final frontier" monologue into the script (along with a whole list of other problems I am not bringing up), "Star Trek Into Darkness" is a really good movie that is fun to watch over and over. If JJ Abrams can take a terrible script and turn it into an amazing movie, then we should have no worries about "Star Wars: The Force Awakens".

I give "Star Trek Into Darkness" an 8/10.



Notes:
1. Really good casting idea, whoever put that on there. I think that could have worked, had the actual Khan been used.

Review: Star Trek (2009)

I am a Star Wars geek. I take after my mom on that. My dad, on the other hand, is a Star Trek fan. Growing up, I was familiar with "Star Trek: The Next Generation" but I did not know much about it, The Original Series, or any of the original movies. I was interested when I first heard about the new "Star Trek" movie that was being directed by JJ Abrams, because I was a fan of "LOST". My dad was the one to watch it first, of course, on DVD in November 2009. He told me it was really good, so not long after I got it from Redbox. I was surprised at how good it was! I watched it again the next day, this time with the audio commentary. A few days later was Black Friday and I got the single-disc DVD for $5. I have watched the movie 3-4 times a year since then.

When JJ Abrams was announced to be the director of "Star Wars: Episode VII", it was no surprise, because "Star Trek" is a "Star Wars" movie in disguise. It opens with a space battle, features a cantina scene, a planet being destroyed, an ice planet, and ends with a medal ceremony. The VFX were done by Industrial Light and Magic, the sound design was done by Ben Burtt, the novelization was written by Alan Dean Foster. Sure, Abrams was revitalizing a dead franchise, but he was also making his "Star Wars" demo reel in the process.

I have heard people complain that the movie's antagonist, Nero, was a weak villain. I disagree! Within 50 seconds of appearing onscreen he murders Captain Robau in a fit of rage. I compared that to some of the all-time best movie baddies: In "The Avengers" it takes Loki 25 seconds after appearing to start killing people; In "Star Wars" it takes a minute and a half between Darth Vader boarding the Tantive IV and choking Captain Antilles to death; And in "The Dark Knight" the Joker is shown onscreen two and a half minutes before he shoots the bank manager.

What Nero did that the other villains I mentioned did not was destroy a planet and kill six billion Vulcans. Darth Vader is considered one of the best movie villains but he stood by and let Governor Tarkin give the command to destroy Alderaan. Nero committed genocide, and was going to destroy Earth next, followed by every other Federation planet. It is unknown just how many people Nero was willing to murder in order to get his revenge on the Federation.

The casting is great, the story is great, the music is great. I give "Star Trek" a 10/10 for being the best "Star Wars" movie pretending to be a "Star Trek" film.

Online Review: Left Behind (2014)

Ever since I heard that "Left Behind" was being rebooted and that Nicolas Cage was starring in it, I hoped that it was one big April Fool's joke. It wasn't.

The first two "Left Behind" books were made into three movies from 2000-2005 by Cloud Ten Productions. They were terrible (but not as terrible as the new one). They were so terrible that book series co-author Tim LaHaye sued to get the movie rights back. After a lengthy court battle, he won in 2008. Unfortunately, the deal said that he had a few years to make his own movie and he was not able to, so the original producers got the movie rights back. So they decided to make another "Left Behind" movie, a reboot that made "The Amazing Spider-Man" look like a good idea.

The "Left Behind" movies Cloud Ten previously made starred teen heart-throb turned evangelist Kirk Cameron. Other movies made by the company have starred Gary Busey and Mr. T. But with the new "Left Behind" movie, they decided they were ready for the big league and nabbed Nicolas Cage - the actor who never turns down a role. (Actually, he dropped out of "Expendables 3" in order to star in "Left Behind".)

As a big fan of the books, I felt like I was being pranked as every new detail came out about the new movie. When production didn't start as scheduled in spring 2013, I hoped that it wouldn't be made. Filming was pushed to late summer. When it got to be one month before the scheduled June 20, 2014 release and there still wasn't a trailer, I hoped that the movie wouldn't be released. The release was rescheduled for October.

I looked forward to the movie as much as the average "Star Wars" fan would look forward to George Lucas writing and directing a JarJar Binks movie (which would be a better movie than the new "Left Behind" movie). I started watching it knowing that it was going to be horrible. It was worse. I can't even mention everything that movie made me feel. Just know that as bad as it was for you to watch it, it was an even worse for a fan of the books.

To quote one movie review, "Cloud Ten was sued for making a bad Left Behind movie. The newest rendition of Left Behind is not just bad. It’s act of vengeance on Tim LaHaye for the years of courtroom battles." And now he and co-author Jerry Jenkins are forced to break the ninth commandment and say that the movie is really good and that they enjoyed it.

And so I am, and probably everybody who watched the new "Left Behind" movie are, waiting for an apology from producer Paul Lalonde. Expect another bad movie before the apology comes. Or maybe even the Rapture.