2007 / 99 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

According to many sources, the movie “Pathfinder” was completed over a year ago and has been sitting on a studio shelf ever since. Well, it should have stayed on the shelf even longer. It’s tragic that we live in a world where the missing footage from Orson Welles’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” has never been found but wherein someone apparently found this piece of Viking-related shit, dusted it off and decided it warranted a national release.

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2007 / 191 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

The way I understand it, back in the Seventies there were crappy little movie theaters that did nothing but play exploitive B-movies and gory horror films. The films were usually in horrible shape (scratches, frames missing, bad sound, etc.) and the theaters weren’t much better (sticky floors, seats falling apart, dilapidated screens, located in a rough part of town, etc.). These theaters were called grindhouses and, I take it, existed mainly in urban areas. The rural areas had their own equivalent: the drive-in. If they would have called this movie drive-in, the basic idea would have been the same.

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2006 / 120 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Pan’s Labyrinth” is NOT a children’s film. Most reviews I’ve seen of this film make mention of this fact, but it still bears repeating. Do not take your children to this film unless you want them to have nightmares so intense that years of therapy will be required to erase them…unless, of course, your child is like my own sister. She could sit through ANYTHING and not be fazed. Seriously. I was five years older than her and there was stuff that freaked me out that didn’t have any effect on her. Then again, it’s entirely possible that I was far too sensitive as a child and, frankly, a complete wuss.

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2006 / 151 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I’ve seen “The Departed” at least twice now (some of it three times) and I’m glad that I did not review it before now. On my initial viewing of Martin Scorsese’s latest opus, I thought it a brilliant masterpiece on a par with the director’s best work. Perhaps this was because 2006 was a fairly lean year, cinematically, and compared to most of the crap that I had sat through I was so blown away by such a competent piece of work. Seeing it again, however, in the comfort of my own home…I am confident of its competence but no longer so sure of its brilliance.

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2006 / 128 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Insomnia” and “Batman Begins” were fairly straightforward (and relatively great) movies. But lest we forget how director Christopher Nolan’s career began, he has returned with another dense puzzle box of a film. With its unconventional structure and cinematic sleight of hand, “The Prestige” seems less like the work of the man who reinvented the Batman franchise than it does the work of the man who announced his arrival to Hollywood with the film “Memento”.

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2006 / 84 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

“Borat” is a curious mix of fiction and reality. I’m not sure where the line between the two ends in this movie. Apparently, many of the unwitting participants in this film have begun filing law suits against Twentieth Century Fox, the company that distributes the film. That suggests to me that a great deal of the footage that looks real probably is. If these were just actors, they would have no reason to be upset. If they were merely people playing characters that were racist, misogynist and moronic, they’d have nothing to complain about. But, as I suspected all along, the people saying the dumbest things in this film are sincere about them, and that makes Sacha Baron Cohen, the mastermind of this film and the man who portrays the titular character, more than a great comedian. It makes him an amateur sociologist…and something of a genius.

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2006 / 87 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

There is a fine art to making a great action movie. The film needs to have enough plot to propel the action sequences, enough plot to drive them and give them a reason to exist. However, it’s usually best if that plot is not too complex. If the plot is too complicated, then the film is thrown out of balance. No one goes to these movies, after all, for plot. For that, people see interesting little independent movies or those prestige films released in the last two months of the year…or they stay home and read a book. Then again, not enough plot and the movie just becomes a series of explosions without reason. With too little plot, the audience is still provided with some chaos, but they don’t care about it. They are left with no emotional investment in the proceedings. They have nothing and no one to root for (in this it’s also good to have an interesting or, failing that, likable hero and an interestingly evil villain for him to play off of). Therefore a good action movie needs enough plot to keep it moving, but not enough to slow it down. A good action movie plot should be fairly aerodynamic.

Then again, judging by the movie “Crank”, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe a good action movie doesn’t need much plot at all. However, a good action movie needs something that makes it unique. If you can’t hatch an interesting plot, then you at least need an intriguing gimmick.

Like “Speed”, “Crank” has the least plot imaginable…but it does have a great gimmick. A hit man inexplicably named Chev Chelios (played by the taciturn Jason Statham) awakens one morning feeling like shit. He soon discovers the reason for this: he has been poisoned in his sleep by a dude named Ricky Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) with something nicknamed a “Beijing Cocktail”. This drug inhibits the gland that produces adrenaline, or something, causing his body to slow down and eventually shut down altogether. Verona helpfully, and cockily, informs him that he’ll be dead in an hour. However, Verona didn’t count on Statham being a truly resilient son of a bitch. Chelios discovers the only way he can stay alive is by forcing his body to produce adrenaline. Therefore he can’t slow down. He drives as fast as he can, starts random fights, takes drugs, has very public sex with his sweet girlfriend (an adorable Amy Smart) and does just about anything he can to keep his heart pumping. Like a shark, he has to keep moving, as fast as he can, or he’ll die. In short, it’s kind of like “Speed”, except Statham is the bus.

I’ll admit, the premise of this film is pretty ludicrous and kinda stupid. The movie itself has as much logic as a film like “Road House” or “Con Air”. It bears only a passing resemblance to our reality. But that’s fine. That’s really all I want out of my action movies. It has a ludicrous premise, but it plays that premise to its hilt. The movie stays exciting because, like its protagonist, it never slows down. Rapid edits, split screen, Atari graphics, Google Earth, the filmmakers (mysteriously named Nevedrine/Taylor) throw everything they can conceive at the audience to keep our adrenaline pumping, to keep us on our toes. I never knew where this film was ultimately going, or where it would take me next. I thrive on that sensation. The filmmaking style borders on overkill, but for once this excessive style of filmmaking actually works with the story it’s trying to tell. The style of filmmaking actually makes you feel like the main character, moving as fast as you can and keeping yourself adrenalized. The action sequences are clever and inventive, which helps immeasurably. The film’s actual plot (the reason why Statham’s oddly named character has been injected with “this Chinese shit”) is pretty routine. It’s the same plot we’ve seen in pretty much every hit man movie ever made. But since the filmmakers seemed to use their time devising ingenious action scenarios instead, I really didn’t mind. I’d rather more writers and directors used their time to make things explode in new, exciting ways as long as the plot of their film isn’t going to reinvent the wheel anyway. There are some great fight sequences, an excellent sequence in a hospital, the best car chase through a mall since “The Blues Brothers”, and a particularly outlandish motorcycle ride. This is the most fun I’ve had at a movie in ages. I also love that the filmmakers milk their bizarre premise for all that its worth. They continually find new, inspired ways for Chelios to keep moving and new methods for him to introduce bursts of adrenaline into his anatomy. I love it when a movie makes the most of its premise. If you’re gonna go, go balls out.

The film loses a bit of steam toward the middle, I must admit. I actually started to get a tad restless. That’s when it starts to concentrate on the actual plot which, as I said before, is pretty routine and flimsy. But the filmmakers “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to this outlandish material works more often than it doesn’t and the actors (particularly the twitchily psychotic Castillo, the eye-poppingly intense Statham and Dwight Yoakam as a depraved, laconic Zen Cowboy doctor) invest these outrageous proceedings with everything they’ve got. Jason Statham invests the film with urgency and Amy Smart invests her scenes with a sweet humanity. “Crank” doesn’t give you a chance to get bored. It’s not hard to suspend disbelief while watching this film either. The movie doesn’t slow down long enough for you to realize how ridiculous all of this is. It’s such giddy, goofy fun that the smile didn’t leave my face until about half an hour after the final credits rolled. “Crank” isn’t going to win an Oscar but, unlike a lot of action movies, it doesn’t seem to have any pompous delusions that it will. I don’t think the people behind this movie are even aware the Oscars exist. “Crank” isn’t reinventing the wheel; it’s just trying to keep its audience relentlessly entertained. And, on that score, it succeeds brilliantly.

It’s not the best film of the year, but it is definitely the most fun. It’s one of those rare films that understand it’s not your plot that matters, it’s your attitude. And “Crank” has enough attitude for three movies. It’s a hard-R-rated extravaganza of blood, breasts, psychosis, gore and pure unadulterated mayhem that doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “politically correct”. I didn’t realize how much I’ve missed this sort of thing. It’s just as good as those gleefully brain-dead action movies they made in the 1980’s. If you’re nostalgic for films like “Rambo: First Blood Part 2” and “Road House” then get your ass to a theater. If not, then go see “The Illusionist” and leave the rest of us alone. Like its lead actor, “Crank” has a certain kamikaze delight that is sadly lacking in most modern action films.

2006 / 110 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

I don’t think there’s a filmmaker beside M. Night Shyamalan who would have had the sheer hubris to roll on a mess like “Lady in the Water”. “Lady in the Water” is, as Quentin Tarantino once said of Brian De Palma’s “Bonfire of the Vanities”: “the kind of mess that only a talented filmmaker can make.”

According to M. Night Shyamalan, “Lady in the Water” began as a story that he told his daughters at bedtime. The tale concerns a narf (kind of like a mermaid without the fins) from an undersea world who comes to influence mankind and push us toward another stage of intellectual development…or something. She comes to our world through a tunnel from her sea kingdom that ends up in a Pennsylvania swimming pool. The caretaker of the apartment complex where this pool resides is a guy named Cleveland Heep (Paul Giamatti). Heep discovers this lady in the pool water, falls into the pool and almost drowns before she saves him. After this, Heep lets the narf sleep on his couch while he tries to help her find the human being she has come to inspire.

Also living in this apartment complex are a man who is great at crossword puzzles, a hermit, a man who lifts weights to develop the muscles on only one side of his body, an apartment full of stoners, and a crotchety film critic. Proving that it takes a village to help a narf, all of these strange characters eventually come together to help the narf (the word gets sillier every time I type it) achieve her goal and also to protect her from being killed by a scrunt (a cross between a wolf, a porcupine and a lichen intent on keeping her from completing her mission…for some reason).

Just from reading that synopsis, you can probably tell that “Lady in the Water” is a mess. For one thing, it’s often just plain silly. A man with well-defined muscles on only one side of his body, a narf named Story (Bryce Dallas Howard, looking exceptionally pale and damp), something called a scrunt? These are downright ludicrous concepts. It would be hard for ANY movie to make them work as anything but high comedy. Yet, somehow, Shyamalan makes most of these goofy (albeit highly original) concepts work…at least for the amount of time that I was watching the movie. After I left the theater, I started wondering why the hell I cared about any of this, but for the two hours I spent in “Lady in the Water’s” company, I was strangely mesmerized. Even when characters started looking for divine revelations in the morning crossword puzzle and asking a film critic how the film’s events would turn out, these plot machinations somehow didn’t make me want to throw popcorn at the screen. Perhaps it is because Shyamalan brings to “Lady in the Water” the same dark, suspenseful tone that he has brought to all his other films. The goofy events onscreen take on a ponderous, self-important weight due to the way Shyamalan stages and lights them. The scrunt is a wacky concept, but Shyamalan presents it in such a way that it’s actually pretty creepy. Shyamalan casting himself as a writer with the potential to change the entire world is a pretty shaky proposition, yet Shyamalan the director actually manages to coax a good performance out of himself. It’s not actually as self-delusional as it would seem.

Still, despite the fact that most of the film works, this is a slight, silly film with a self-important tone. Giamatti and Howard do good work, as do most of the supporting actors, but they can’t quite compensate for the fact that their character names are “Cleveland Heep” and “Story”. Themes that would work as subtext are actually spoken aloud by major characters (never good). Moments of sublime ridiculousness abound. The plot isn’t bad, but if Shymalan had used a more fantastical, whimsical approach, it might have worked even better. Shyamalan’s standard look and tone are starting to wear thin. This is a fairy tale, after all, and he still shoots it like a thriller. This, his standard approach, still works, but in “Lady in the Water” I could see cracks forming around its edges. If Shyamalan doesn’t branch out and try something new, I doubt his usual method will work very much longer. “Lady in the Water” is lighter than his past efforts, but it’s still a tad ponderous for its own good.

“Lady in the Water” is like a balloon attached to a lead weight. By all rights, it should never leave the ground. It should falter under the weight of its flaws. And yet, by some bizarre miracle, the movie actually remains airborne most of the time. It’s silly, self-important and weird but it’s still original and highly entertaining…in its own, lunatic fashion. For all its flaws, “Lady in the Water” still one man’s artistic vision. As goofy as this story is, Shyamalan obviously cares about it, and that care and love translate through past everything else. In a summer of films that seem crafted by a committee of executives, these things make “Lady in the Water” downright refreshing.

2006 / 150 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Hollywood seems increasingly eager to churn out fun summer blockbusters. The studios have sunk all their money into making these franchises and remakes and action-packed spectacles…and yet they seem to have completely forgotten how to make one of the damned things.

Take, for example, the second film in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. I loved the original film precisely because it was one of the few summer blockbusters that remembered and embraced the summer blockbuster’s original mission statement: to provide fun at any cost. The original pirate had a unique, wonderful creation of a main character (Capt. Jack Sparrow played with droll wit and audacity by the incomparable Johnny Depp) a streamlined plot that took itself just seriously enough, fun special effects, plenty of action and a romance that while not revolutionary worked within the framework of the film. It also had charm, wit, a delightful swashbuckling flair and a lush, romantic, storybook production design. It was fresh. It was exotic. And it was a hell of a lot of fun.

The exotic flair of the first film is now standard operating procedure as the second film opens. I am happy to report that the baroque production design and visual flair that made the original “Pirates” such a feast for the eyes remains in tact. There are portions of this film that are achingly gorgeous. The production designers are to be commended for each and every set.

Sadly, the members of the production design team are the only ones working up to the par of the first film.

Everyone else seems to have forgotten what made us love “Pirates” in the first place. The plot of the first was simple, breezy and a little silly. But that was all right. The plot did its job, providing a perfect framework for such eccentric goodies as Depp’s performance, a great deal of swashbuckling action, and some nifty special effects. This time the filmmakers have provided both too much plot and not enough. I will explain. The film’s plot is a convoluted, labyrinthine exercise involving baddies from the East Indian Trading Company, an enchanted compass, a chest containing the heart of a diabolical otherworldly fiend, a special key, a disgraced commodore, and a paternal reunion. This is too much plot, and the film spends way too much time untangling it. I understand that they felt the need to devise a plotline complex enough to run the course of two sequels but, like “The Matrix Reloaded”, they seem to have gone overboard and smothered any sense of fun the film might otherwise have been able to generate. The movie has no time to be fun because it has to spend so much time explaining what the hell is going on. The movie founders under the weight of exposition, which wouldn’t be so bad if the exposition was interesting. Unfortunately, it is not. I, for one, did not care about a single element of the film’s storyline. It just didn’t grab me. There’s no hook here, nothing original or emotionally compelling.

Also, the film takes too many diversions that aren’t very diverting. Too much screen time is wasted on the Island of Wacky Cannibals. This is material we’ve seen in a thousand similar films (white man becomes god of backward tribe, tribe is full of cannibals, said cannibals are complete morons) and the film does nothing to distinguish this material. The only reason it exists is to provide a pointless, yet admittedly amusing, action sequences involving large round cages. The characters imprisoned in these cage balls make an escape that reminded me of watching a hamster manipulate one of those big exercise balls. This part is amusing, but it does absolutely nothing to further the plot, which wouldn’t be such a problem if the filmmakers hadn’t made the plot so damned important.

A large part of screen time is also, unfortunately, devoted to the villains aboard The Flying Dutchman, a cursed ship captained by Davy Jones. Neither Davy Jones nor any of his crew is very intimidating. Even worse, the special effects used to bring them to life look downright silly. How scary is a guy with a conch shell for a head? Not very. Neither Davy nor any of his crew manage to generate much menace (Davy does the best, with his “Phantom of the Opera”-style organ playing and his tentacled moustache). They’re about as intimidating as Looney Toons villains. In the original, Geoffrey Rush managed to generate a real sense of menace. Also, Rush’s Capt. Barbossa had actual motivation. His character was well developed. Davy Jones is evil because…well, he’s evil. There’s some mumbo-jumbo about a failed romance or something, but that it’s never developed. Maybe it will be developed in the sequel, but that doesn’t help this movie any.

The heroes don’t fare much better than the villains, I’m afraid. What little interest we in the audience had in Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner character is now gone. He got the girl at the end of the first movie. Watching a guy try to keep the girl isn’t all that exciting. The filmmakers don’t give us much reason to root for him. Keira Knightley is also underused and underdeveloped. She comes off as unrealistic (though, considering her lack of breasts, the fact that she’s able to pass herself off as a male crewmember is entirely too believable) and shrewish. She’s irritating. But the biggest shock is Johnny Depp’s Capt. Jack Sparrow. He just isn’t given enough to do. Unlike the first movie, he has no great lines to wrap his droll accent around and he’s barely a participant in the plot. His dialogue is a series of overly ornate, overly complex nonsense that has no point and little in the way of flair. His mannerisms are meant to be the joke, but we all got used to those the first time around. Perhaps the movie’s biggest flaw is that it gives Depp nothing new to work with. He’s the star of the movie and he’s largely pushed into the background.

The last ten or fifteen minutes are actually quite good. They’re so good that I’m actually looking forward the next “Pirates” sequel. Hopefully that movie will eschew the exposition and dense plotting altogether and just provide the fun and action that is sorely lacking in this movie. There are a couple of action sequences, but they’re few and far between and, when they do come, they’re not as exhilarating as anything in the first film. There’s none of the invention and kamikaze glee that “Pirates of the Caribbean” so elegantly demonstrated. The first movie had a certain spring in its step. That carries over to the beginning of this movie and resurfaces at the end but is mostly drowned by excessive length and too many dull subplots. The movie is as ornate and convoluted as most of Captain Jack’s dialogue and just as hollow.

The last fifteen minutes left me wanting more. The preceding two hours and fifteen minutes left me wanting less.

2006 / 154 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

After at least ten years of starts and stops, with directors like Tim Burton, McG, and Brett Ratner all taking turns at development, Superman finally returns to the big screen. And though the results aren’t bad (I’ll get to that in a minute) I sorta wish this film would have gotten off the ground back in the late 90’s, with Tim Burton at the helm, Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel, Linda Fiorentino as Lois Lane (in my opinion, she’s the ultimate choice) and Kevin Spacey as Luthor. From what I’ve heard, the script involved a gay robot and a polar bear fight…but at least it would have been fascinating in a deranged, shitty-movie-night candidate fiasco sort of way.

After ten years of development and several complete personnel changes (except for Spacey, the best choice for Lex Luthor and the only one who weathered all the changes) the Superman we get can’t help but be rather disappointing. Then again, I’ve never been the biggest Superman fan. He’s too invincible to be really interesting. Batman has that dark revenge streak. Spider-Man has the trouble of trying to juggle a normal life AND be a superhero (with all the romantic and financial problems that lie therein). And Aquaman…well, okay, Aquaman sucks. At least Superman can do more than talk to fish. Superman can stop bullets, fly, and all that other stuff. The only thing that puts a crimp in his day is a green rock. That’s inherently cheesy, and it’s the reason Superman has never previously gelled for me.

The most pleasant surprise of this Superman film was how vulnerable Superman is. First of all, he’s in love with a woman who only wants him when he’s in a cape (and wants nothing to do with him as Clark Kent). It’s always seemed to me that Lois is kind of a superficial, career-centric bitch. Kate Bosworth really doesn’t do anything to change my opinion there. But by emphasizing this problematic love affair as well as Superman longing to know more about his roots (it’s what prompts his five year absence from Metropolis and Planet Earth) the movie gives us a more interesting Superman than we’ve seen in a lot of other movies. Though, even without this emotional baggage, Christopher Reeve did a much better job with the character. The best thing I can say about Brandon Routh’s portrayal of Superman/Clark is that he reminds me of Reeve. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do much to make the role his own. His portrayal of Superman reminds me of one of those TV shows where an actor dies or leaves and they plug another actor into the character and have him act identically to the man who left. They may do their best, but they never erase your memory of the other guy, unless they are allowed to put some unique stamp on the role. Routh doesn’t put his stamp on the role. He gives it a good shot, but he mostly makes us miss Reeve. Tom Welling, on TV’s “Smallville”, actually does a better job of owning this character. Still, the movie makes Superman a lot more vulnerable, and that gives us a little more interest in him.

The movie spends so much time making him vulnerable, unfortunately, that it forgets to make him heroic. It skimps on the exciting set pieces and dangerous situations that make us care about Superman in the first place. Moments of this film really work well. Superman’s first heroic rescue, for example, is amazing. It’s a literally crowd-pleasing moment. It’s almost as good as something from the original “Superman”. But too many of the action sequences have a “been there, done that” feel. It’s almost as if the filmmakers dusted off the original Superman script and just decided to update the effects. Big real estate scheme? Check. Entire city in jeopardy from earthquake thing? Check. The setup is great, and the first hour really gets things flowing nicely. Kevin Spacey does admirable, nuanced, creepy work as Lex Luthor but his villainous plot sucks. It’s nowhere near as good as Hackman’s ingenious scheme from the original movie. He has the best moment of the movie (it involves Superman being put in really big trouble) and Spacey gives the role a more sinister slant than Hackman. Spacey’s Luthor is a great example of a great actor taking a character and completely making it his own. Parker Posey is better than I expected as his moll, but I was annoyed that, once again, Luthor’s girlfriend brings his whole criminal empire crashing down. It’s the same thing that happened in the first film. You think the filmmakers could have done something new. If there’s a sequel to this film (and there probably will be) I hope that Luthor learns to swear off women altogether.

It was in the second half, however, that the movie started getting on my nerves. For one thing, nothing happens. The film is largely about character development, and it does well with that…to a point. But for character-driven material to work, you need to have some conflict between the characters. For example: in Superman’s absence, Lois has had a kid and is involved with her editor’s nephew Richard (James Marsden, best known as Cyclops from the X-Men films). Superman comes back, and Richard can clearly see that Lois wants him. He subtly asks her if she likes him, but that’s it. His character is too nice of a guy to get in his face about it. Gee, that’s great if he’s an actual guy. But this is a movie. Shouldn’t he confront her about that? That’s what we like to call drama. Hell, he could even confront Superman about it. That’d be cool. Superman could take a verbal bitching from Richard and not fight back because, well, Richard’s just a regular dude. Plus, he and Lois aren’t officially involved anyway. But, no, Richard just puts up with it. He should at least be pissed that he’s been seeing this woman for five years and they aren’t even talking marriage. I know that women are generally seen as the ones who want a rock on their finger, but guys occasionally want it too. And if she doesn’t, that means she really doesn’t want to be there and she wants to be with Superman. See what I’m saying here? This is real drama. The proceedings would’ve been a lot livelier.

Aside from the stagnant domestic stuff, the action stuff is rather lame. Superman doesn’t do all that much, not really. He picks up a big rock, stops a couple people from getting squashed, and stops some bullets. No big deal. We’ve seen this already. The first action sequence, where Superman saves a plane from being dragged into outer space, is a cool set piece and it’s original. It’s the best of the movie. The rest are bland rehashes of things we’ve already seen. Hell, the stakes on his other rescues aren’t even all that high. We don’t really get the sense that anyone or anything is in jeopardy. After all, if the screenwriters can’t make drama out of a relationship as soap-opera ready as the Lois/Richard/Superman love triangle (there’s even a kid whose paternity is in question!) then how are they going to make us give a shit about billions of lives hanging in the balance? Well, they could have…but they don’t. Bryan Singer’s direction is good enough that it distracts us from a lot of logistic questions for a while (one of them being: Hey, isn’t that thing made out of Kryptonite? How the hell is this happening?) but not for long enough. There’s a lot of flash and rumbling and a lot of things shaking (there are at least three sequences where things vibrate from something akin to an earthquake) but, plot-wise, virtually nothing is going on. Hell, action-wise nothing much is going on. I never got the sense that anything was really at stake here, and that essentially kills all the potential drama.

A lot of money has been spent on this movie (Ben’s big question was: “This cost 200 million?”) and it certainly looks real good but a lack of truly exciting heroics, a lame villainous plot, and some bland storytelling eventually destroy any momentum the movie manages to generate. The performances aren’t bad (Spacey is really good) and the effects are impressive (boy, that’s a huge rock Superman is lifting). But none of that matters if the filmmakers forget to make us care.

The movie did do one thing, though. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the first two Superman films. Sure, they were pretty cheesy and the effects haven’t aged well. But, damn it, they were sure exciting and fun.