***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.

The central problem with the soulless, incoherent mess that is Hellboy 2 is its complete lack of wonder. Not dropping your jaw at an utterly absurd scene is perhaps funny for a gag or two, but to cast your entire film in this jaded scope can get wearisome fast, and boy, Hellboy 2 is a wearisome film.

From the onset, the tone of Hellboy 2 demands that we take human life for granted. Take for instance the opening exposition shot of Abraham and a BPRD flunkie Tom Manning (Jeffrey Tambor) strolling through their office. As Manning whines about his relationship with Hellboy, we catch glimpses of violent mayhem that does not faze the two characters at all. Their conversation abruptly ends when they are both nearly killed by a rolling steel door. Indeed, through the whole scene, both characters are simply bored. And guess what? I was, too.

The ENTIRE GODDAMN film is variations of this tired gag. Bored characters gazing upon what should be mind-shattering events, and shrugging them off as if it were only a matter of a Microsoft program freezing up. As I said, this could be funny once, maybe twice, but after the thirtieth time, this jaded vista becomes redundant and ultimately incoherent.

There is no drama in this film. We know Hellboy is never in danger. He’ll just kick ass and everything will be okay. The supposedly apocalyptic Golden Army turns out to be rather anti-climatic; they may have been a horrifying thing in the Middle Ages, but a modern tank brigade would make short work of them. And how brain-dead predictable is this film? The main baddie Prince Nuada (some albino elf wearing the standard villain guise–pasty skin and greasy hair) is supposedly invincible, though I don’t understand why someone doesn’t blast him with a well-aimed shotgun. Anyway, when he is wounded, his sister Nuala suffers the same wound. So, how do you think Nuada is eventually dispatched? I won’t even dignify this hackneyed convention with the term “spoiler.”

Oh, how I long for Guillermo del Toro’s economic, tidy, and most importantly–awe-filled and reverent–Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone. It’s no accident that del Toro’s best films have a child as a protagonist. What better age group to infuse the appropriate sense of shock and wonder to accompany Del Toro’s dazzling visuals? Indeed, the best part of Hellboy 2 is the first five minutes; a young Hellboy is transfixed by his foster father’s mordant, gothic tale of how the Golden Army came about, and in this wondrous opening, I too was filled with awe, ready to enter a fantasy world. But Del Toro chooses to kill this sense of wonder with Hellboy and Abraham drinking Tecate in a can and singing Barry Manilow in the film’s most cringeworthy scene. Look…they’re monsters, but they act just like two drunken buddies! Ho ho ho. Or take this plant monster that wreaks utter devastation on a city block. You’d think the army would show up, or at least most of the city’s police force. Well, I only saw a couple of cop cars in that scene, as it this Wrath of God were nothing more than a domestic disturbance.

I despised Hellboy 2 for its jaded, wink wink nudge nudge mechanics, done wholly for the masturbatory pleasure of fanboys. I hated its arbitrary scene setups that make little sense, the story lurching about from locale to locale for the sole reason of setting up another special effects extravaganza. But most of all, beyond the fact Hellboy 2 is a spectacularly boring film, I hated this film’s unfunny nonchalance. I’ve said this a million times, and I’ll say it for another million: Special effects, shmecial effects. It’s the story, stupid.

An incompetent, dunderheaded attempt at gravitas, Iron Man is the same old rusty crap. As the implausibilities continue to pile on, Robert Downing, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges do little to conceal their boredom and irritation with the infantile script. We get character development via a ridiculous premise that an arms dealer…an ARMS DEALER…is somehow a media darling and a pop culture celebrity ala Richard Branson. We get product placements for Burger King cheeseburgers, military hardware, and some bloated Audi sports cars.

The plot is handed to us via the usual soup line method of Plot Convenience Playhouse. Here’s Tony Stark playing with his toys. Here’s Stark at some press conference. Here’s his personal assistant explaining to us what a busy, glamorous life he’s leading. We get a feeble attempt at moralizing (Iron Man saves the day by rescuing an Afghan village being terrorized by an “apolitical” (of course) group called The Ten Rings), all of this activity being readily broadcast for the plot’s sake to the authorities. And don’t even get me started on how Stark’s captors are too retarded to realize he’s working on a suit of armor rather than a missile system.

But the central, unintended irony of this film is Stark’s sudden moral outrage against his line of business. “Iron Man” avoids like the plague any hint of subtext. How could Stark not know his weapons would eventually end up in the “bad guys” hands? I find it hard to believe any arms dealer’s head is shoved that far up his ass. And um, why is the US in Afghanistan again? Never mind, let’s get to the explosions!

I know, I know, it’s “only a comic book movie, yadda yadda,” but compared to the soul searching and uncomfortable ambiguities so eloquently expressed in Batman Begins and Spiderman 2, this heroic epic is pretty tepid stuff. But where do I get off bitching about this flick? I’m just as guilty as the morons who cobbled this shit together. I bought the ticket, I sat through it, and I helped pump up the film’s obscene box office numbers, thereby insuring more of this crap will be produced. It’s sort of like me marching in peace protests as a chunk of my paycheck goes to Bush’s war machine. So, please…forget what I said and enjoy this latest bastard stepchild of Hollywood and the Department of Defense.