Inception, the latest attempt to make Leonardo DiCaprio a weighty actor, fails in this impossible quest. All the ingredients of Inception are spot-on; great acting, a beguiling premise, a relentless film-noir atmosphere, and clean special effects. But having all the right notes does not necessarily make for a good film. I would hazard that Inception is a victim of its own poor editing, which in the end is far and away the most important aspect of filmmaking. Inception spends too much time dangling the premise before our noses while falling far short of a film’s most important task—creating sympathy and empathy for its characters.

DiCaprio plays Dominic the Extractor, who specializes in stealing ideas of dreams and planting ideas into people’s heads. His fellow cast members are a who’s who in A-list actors who are given frustratingly bland characters: Ken Wantabe giving us the inscrutable Asian routine once again, Joseph Gordon-Levitt still looking like a teenager, Michael Caine’s obligatory wizened old man shtick, Marion Cotillard as the wounded dream-wife always looking for a excuse to stab someone, and a surprisingly restrained (and therefore tolerable) Ellen Page playing a newly hired dream architect who should have been a major character in the story, but barely shows up in the film. Even the great Cillian Murphy (who I still refer to as “My Man Scarecrow”) is handed the most cliché of conflicts, the inability to satisfy his domineering father. He looks as bored as Jeff Bridges did in Iron Man. In essence, Inception boasts a very good looking, talented cast, but the characters inspire nothing but apathy and a sinking feeling of been there-done that.

The plot piles on top of itself like a triple-decker sandwich that’s either about to collapse or give you lockjaw. Inception has none of the Mobius strip charm of Momento or Lost Highway. There are dreams inside of dreams inside of dreams, but all these dives in the human subconscious begin to resemble each other like suburban strip malls. Look, there’s an auto-cypher of a happy family, little children laughing and running into Dominic’s arms, on the beach, naturally. And there’s the stop-motion Matrix style physics to make you feel disoriented. One of the great lines of the movie refers to the fact that you never think a dream is strange until you wake up, yet this intriguing truth is never explored. I was wondering about that until I realized that almost none of these dreams are actually strange.

The crux of Inception’s failure is, ironically enough, the blandness of its imagination. You would think that a technology such as dream manipulation would be an earth-shattering, game changing device, like the automobile or sliced bread. But alas, this most wondrous of inventions is merely at the service at some mundane corporate espionage plot device, some attempt to corner the energy market. Ho hum. And the poverty of the dreamscapes is surprising as well. The dreams we enter are anonymous cities populated by buildings of Dominic and his wife Mallorie’s nostalgia, grey streets that resemble some dreary downtown of a Midwestern city. The only scene that held any interest for me was the opium den of dreams run by chemist Yusuf (a jovially charming Dileep Rao), hinting that all this dream manipulation is becoming this generation’s crack cocaine. Now that’s a premise that could suspend my disbelief. An overbearing score by by Hans Zimmer only helps muddle the scenes, desperately trying to extract drama when there is none.

You’d figure with the unlimited potential of the human imagination, you’d have a sex orgy on a space station or a dinosaur rodeo, but I suppose married life means being shackled to a boring imagination. In short, this film is a more smartly dressed, far less obnoxious version of the migraine-inducing Strange Days. As much as I tried to suspend my disbelief, my dreams weren’t having it. Inception is not a terrible film—it’s too well acted and yes, too well directed (particularly in the case of the Taming of the Page); rather, I would describe Inception as disappointing, after the fearless 70s-style moral ambiguity and rich characterization of Nolan’s Batman films. Perhaps Inception deserves another look on my part, but I simply don’t give a hoot about Dominic and his tortured psyche. It’s nothing a halfway competent psychiatrist couldn’t sort out.

**SPOILER WARNING**

Johannesburg has been besieged by a giant hovering metaphor, which deposits a vast population of ‘aliens’ in a shantytown ruled by African gangsters. It’s up to an annoying pencil pusher with a silly accent to exterminate them for a fascist mega-corporation. District 9 wins a point for its clever use of CGI, creating the illusion of a much grander scope than its paltry budget would allow. Also, the cinematography vastly diminishes the image quality, allowing for less detail intensive modeling. The first act is a very badly done fake documentary, appearing to be something produced for South African Community Television; here, the crappy image works to the advantage of the film, provided it is viewed as a strange parody of apartheid, just as Alien Nation satirized mass Mexican immigration.

Rookie director Neill Blumkamp is too clever by half; the interviewed “alien experts” often must explain things that would be self-evident in their own universe, and there are several lame attempts at foreshadowing the terrible fate of its protagonist. Intriguing details, such as the prawn junkies who become strung out on canned cat food, are brought up and then never pay off; it’s all smoke and mirrors. The first 30 minutes are purely expository, setting up the human task force, led by a Jesse Ventura clone, who will ultimately become the one-dimensional source of villainy. The rest is bullshit that comes across like an imitation of the Media Breaks in Starship Troopers and the magnificent Robocop, both infinitely better offerings for the science fiction fan.

While the attempts at hard sci-fi are sometimes compelling, it doesn’t take very long until one realizes the trickery is there to distract us from the inherent lack of a plot. Nothing of interest happens until Wikus van der Merwe, the pencil pusher, encounters a plot device that inexplicably turns him into an alien. Somehow, this mysterious alien race is able to make fuel for their ship that turns humans into one of their own upon contact. By this logic, if a prawn were to come into contact with, say, gasoline, he would slowly but surely turn into a human. Maybe District 10 will deal with this subject. Lord knows District 9 has made a trainload of cash. Part of me’s happy for Peter Jackson and his glorious Wingnut Films, but another part’s mystified as to why everyone likes this increasingly ridiculous, onanistic CGI showcase. Even the great Walter Chaw was seduced by the skillful special effects, wrote a superlative review, and will doubtless place this halfhearted effort on his Top 10 list. To be fair, it’s been an underwhelming year at the movies, but raising District 9 to classic status is a premature action at best. Especially in light of just how bad the movie becomes after a certain point.

The third act undoes all the promise of the plotless first act, ditches the faux-doc format and turns into a braindead, formulaic buddy action flick, with the only bits of originality being Wikus’ utter heartlessness and cowardice in the face of the thinly developed Bad Guys. But he comes back to use his wicked new prawn tentacle to wreak havoc, in an unexplained, unearned shift of character. Even more insulting is the simplistic conflict, using an all-purpose evil conglomerate to represent all of humanity, which leaves the oppressed “prawns” as the only sympathetic characters by default. But, since the aliens are unable to use their own weaponry, Wikus is inexplicably left to free the prawns from the icy grasp of apartheid. And he does so during an action sequence that features  a robotic deus ex machina giving Wikus incredible powers, which cause the baddies to explode juicily while they empty machine guns into his metal carapace with no visible effect. And the damn thing is boring. As William Hurt once said, “How do you fuck that up!?”

Not like the painfully uncomplicated carnage would faze the Halo fans in the audience who are most assuredly jacked up on Mountain Dew. Cool alien gun make bad humans go BOOM! Whee!!!!

There could be so much more to this universe. How come the humans didn’t turn the floating ship into a military outpost or a tourist attraction? How come the world’s brightest minds were unable to reverse-engineer the aliens’ advanced weaponry? How come Wikus is able to maneuver an alien battle-mech, with digitized readouts all in Prawnese, after only 70 odd hours as a humalien? How come, for a movie that tries so damn hard to be against racism, the only black characters are evil drug lords, voodoo cultists, or bureaucratic puppets who end up in prison? How come, for a movie with such ambitious scope, does 75% of the action take place in a generic shantytown set? How come this Blumkamp fellow, whose only prior experience was directing video game cut scenes, gets to be called a “visionary” while much more capable directors continue to slave away unnoticed in non-genre fields?

District 9 is a shoo-in for Overhyped Film of the Year. Its novelty wears out before the second act is even through, and by the time the dickish “hero” begins his cathartic rampage, you’ll either be offended or asleep. It is just another paean to the power of the white man, dressed up with a much more elaborate disguise than usual. In the end, the sci-fi is so soft you could spread it on a Ritz cracker to wash down with some White Zinfandel.

***Warning: Spoilers Ahead***

It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with some hyper-realistic family drama set in modern day Cleveland, or a space opera involving bug-eyed aliens intent on Armageddon/Ragnarok. Films must adhere to an INTERNAL LOGIC,thereby creating a series of circumstances that a) are more or less seem plausible given the premise and b) involve characters who react in a plausible manner in the given circumstances, no matter how extraordinary or mundane.

But for feck’s sake, I’m not here to lecture you about internal logic. Develop an appreciation for this lost cinematic art on your own damn time.

Star Trek is a spectacular failure on any number of fronts. First, we’re introduced to a little kid who is, as far as I can tell, is borderline psychotic/suicidal. Lil’ Kirk drives an antique Corvette off a cliff, nearly killing himself. C’mon, just indulge me for ten seconds. When you were a wee lad, did it ever, ever occur to do something like that? Don’t you think the circumstances to drive a child to do such an extreme act are worth examining? Naaah…he’s just being a cool, reckless rebel without a cause. We also get a Nokia product placement because Nokia will still exist in the 25th century. Now there’s a scary thought.

Fast forward to Cadet Kirk. First we get this ridiculous contrivance that “all of Starfleet is tied up in one system,” so when Vulcan is under attack, let’s send an all-cadet fleet to protect Vulcan. Huh? Again, I’m no General Eisenhower, but that sounds like pretty piss-poor military planning to me. And what the devil was the entire, experienced Starfleet doing in one system? Never mind, it’s a (drumroll and fanfare please) PLOT DEVICE. You are hereby order to accept without question the all-knowing PLOT DEVICE, for without it, we have no plot.

And Lord have mercy, this movie should have been called Plot Device Trek. Cadet Kirk seemingly out of nowhere gets promoted immediately to First Officer without going through any ranks. And when First Officer Kirk gets insubordinate with rule stickler Spock, what does Spock do? MAROON HIM ON A ICE PLANET? Now I don’t have the blueprints to the USS Enterprise handy, but I imagine those starships do come equipped with a brig. So Spock does something nearly tantamount to murder (as Kirk is almost torn to pieces by not one, but two ice planet monsters in the film’s most flagrant theft of Star Wars), but it works out for the best, ’cause Kirk JUST HAPPENS to stumble upon the cave where Back to the Future Spock is residing. How convenient.

After a while, I stopped noting the Plot Devices, and just gritted my teeth as the storyline turned from confusing to downright incoherent…something about some pissed off Romulan miners with facial tattoos flying around in this all-powerful spaceship that can shoot antimatter into planets and blow ‘em up real good (inadvertently conjuring up John Carpenter’s Dark Star), and said Romulans waiting around for 20 odd years for Back to the Future Spock to show up. And they got this thick chain snaking down to the planet, and no one can do anything about it, but somehow everyone knows it’s for blowing up planets. Um, what?

I suppose in a more charitable mood, I could deal with the clumsy plotting were it not for the destroyed planets in question. Again, indulge me for a moment. Close your eyes, imagine you’re in the Star Trek universe, working somewhere other than Earth. You just got the news that Earth got blown to pieces, along with the six billion people on it.

Now open your eyes. If you have any scrap of humanity in you, you’d probably start screaming, smash your head against the nearest wall, and lose your mind for a good month or two as you come to grips with your whole reality being shattered. Hell, that premise alone could be the entire movie. But not in Movie Land. The wholesale destruction of Romulus and Vulcan are…yep, you guessed it…PLOT DEVICES. Spock does freak out a little bit, but he just glibly remarks, “Now I’m an endangered species” because now there’s only like, 10,000 Vulcans left. Oh well, shit happens.

Star Trek even fails in its main conceit: the character development of the Star Trek icons. We’re only given cursory looks at Kirk and Spock’s past, and we learn next to nothing about Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, and Scotty (a horribly miscast Simon Pegg), other than they show up for the obligatory “the gang’s all here” scenes. The only character that I found intriguing was Dr. McCoy, played by a grizzled and wonderful Karl Urban. We learn he’s freshly divorced, about two beers short of six pack, and has some serious hangups. Urban nails this character with perfection, and honestly, he was the only character I really cared about.

And therein lies the source of Star Trek’s miserable failure. Star Trek is an extremely timid film, pandering to both anal-retentive fanboys who must have everything just right, and middle-brow blockbuster zombies who like big explosions and the complete avoidance of anything challenging their suburban preconceptions. If you really examine the characters of the original series, all the characters were seriously off their rockers. Kirk was a textbook narcissist, Spock smothered his human side to maniacal levels, Scotty cared more about machines than people, Chekov was probably on meth, and Sulu and Uhura were Vulcan wanna-bees. All of these psychological hang-ups could have made for beautiful cinematic fodder…an examination of what kind of nutjobs would risk their lives and fling themselves in the merciless vacuum of space. But noooo….we can’t afford to offend, confuse, or otherwise frighten the fanboys and SUV moms & broods.

So let’s stick to the Michael Bay game plan of a surefire moneymaker and crowd pleaser. I will bet you dollars to donuts that you will completely forget about Star Trek the moment you step out of the theater. For Star Trek is the most forgettable film since…Jesus, when was the last memorable Star Trek film?

But to end this review on a positive note…Bless my heart, Wrath of Khan just gets better and better with age.