Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009)

Directed by: Shawn Levy

Starring: Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Hank Azaria

Other Actors of Note: Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest, Ricky Gervais, Bill Hader, Jay Burachel, Clint Howard, Eugene Levy, Ed Helms, and Jonah Hill

Plot: When the Museum of Natural History is closed for upgrades and renovations, the museum pieces are moved into federal storage at the famous Washington Museums. The centerpiece of the film will be bringing to life the Smithsonian Institution, which houses the world's largest museum complex with more than 136 million items in its collections, ranging from the plane Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) flew on her non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic and Al Capone's (Jon Bernthal) rap sheet and mug shot to Dorothy's ruby slippers, Fonzie's jacket from Happy Days, the still from M*A*S*H and Archie Bunker's lounge chair from All in the Family. With a forwarded resume, Larry (Ben Stiller) becomes another caretaker at the Smithsonian, where Kahmunrah, an evil Pharaoh will come to life with the reestablishing of a tablet as a magical force in the museum bringing the old exhibits (Such as Theodore Roosevelt and Dexter) and new exhibits (like General Custer and Al Capone) back to life, and in conflict with each other. Larry enlists the help of Amelia Earheart, who he develops a romantic interest in, and together they try to put everything back in order. Taken from www.imdb.com.

When it comes to mainstream sequels, the idea is to take everything that worked in the first movie and supplement it with things that are bigger and, theoretically, better. However this plan rarely works.

I am quite unashamed to admit that I really enjoyed the first "Night at the Museum" it was a fun little movie with a sense of adventure that didn't try to be too serious but also didn't patronize its intended audience. Ben Stiller and Robin Williams (as well as Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan) were funny and managed to not feel forced. No to mention the message about meuseums was understated and, I thought, well put. Not to mention they managed to capitalize on Mickey Rooney's insanity. For those who claimed that it was juveneille or stupid, I would like to remind you that it was meant to entertain fucking 8-year-olds you elitest assholes! If you feel the need to complain about this movie then you obviously don't remember "The Pagemaster", "Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest", or any of the other godawful kids movies from the 90s.

However, as much as I liked the original movie, this sequel represents everything that goes wrong when studios try the "go big or go home" approach.

So, we rejoin Larry Daley as a succesful businessman who has quit his job as a night guard but still drops by the museum every once in a while. But of course he's become horribly overwhelmed with bring rich and famous and just doesn't have time to talk to museum exhibits anymore. Well now most of the exhibits are being removed and taken to the Smithsonian in the national archives, the monkey ends up stealing the tablet of Akmunrah and his brother Khamunrah is awakened in the National Archives and vows to awaken his army of the dead to take over the world using the tablet. Larry goes to Washington DC to try and save the day.


As much as everyone hated Ben Stiller in the first movie I thought he gave a good performance that may have fallen short of some of his truly great roles (Mr. Furious in "Mystery Men", Tugg Speedman in "Tropic Thunder", Gary Focker in "Meet the Parents") was certainly still one of his more entertaining and funny characters. Stiller still remains one of the good points but without a good cast of characters to have chemistry with he's kind of weak here on his own. There's a good moment early on between him and another security guard played by Jonah Hill that is far too short and sadly not lived up to during the rest of the movie.

So Carla Gugino pissed off with no explanation, so in her place we have Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. Sweet Jesus, if the real Amelia Earhart was this goddamn annoying then it was no accident that she dissappeared without a trace, it was divine intervention. Adams is one of the most obnoxious characters I've seen in quite some time, which makes the romance between Larry and Amelia seem even more forced than it was already. At very least she wears tight aviator's pants and the cameraman seems obsessed with giving us shots of her ass.

Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan are one of the few good things that returns from the first movie (the t-rex, Easter Island Statue, and Robin Williams only make small appearances at the beginning and end of the movie) but they don't get much of a chance to shine until the big fight at the end that involves a wonderful pisstake of "300."

Hank Azaria plays 3 roles, a very over-the-top (in a bad way) Abraham Lincoln, a thinker statue that sounds like JFK for no reason, and the villain of the film: Kahmunrah. Azaria does a Boris Karloff impression but it sounds more like a Stewie Griffin impersonation done by Jeremy Irons. Hank Azaria is a funny actor but this just another one of his big-budget flops. Then again when you have to fill the shoes of Dick Van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobb you're going to lose.

Bill Hader does a rather humorous General Custer, constantly obsessing over his hair and coming up with horrible war strategies. Unfortunately he only appears in 2 or 3 scenes while we have to put up with Amy Adams for the whole fucking movie.


The plot of this movie is pretty much non-existent. Larry goes to DC to save his favorite museum exhibits. He then gets trapped trying to stop Kahmunrah when he could just turn the middle piece sideways to turn everyone inanimate. You might be saying, "But Baytor, this is a children's film." But I remember catching plot inconsistencies like that when I was a kid so I don't accept that.

This is also added to the fact that there doesn't seem to a single night guard on duty in the whole Smithsonian and all the museums and the Washington monument are right next door to one another. There also appear to be no security cameras to catch Larry causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

Aside from this it's an hour and a half 0f throw away jokes with a few good ones intersperced every now and then all around the thread of a big advertisement for the Smithsonian. Naturally everything is fixed by the time the movie is over. None of the original charm is there from the first movie and only the vaguest hint of the humor remains.


This movie is a perfect case for why going for broke on the sequel is a very very bad idea.

I give "Night of the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" a 2 out of 5. Skip it.

Terminator Salvation (2009)


Directed by: McG

Starring: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood

Other Actors of Note: Helena Bonham Carter, Bryce Dallas Howard, Michael Ironside, Anton Yelchin

Plot: After Skynet has destroyed much of humanity in a nuclear holocaust, a group of survivors led by John Connor struggles to keep the machines from finishing the job. Taken from www.imdb.com.

"Officer Token Angry Blackguy reporting for duty, sir!"

Kids, don't cheat on your wife. Seriously, bad shit happens. When James Cameron sold out and made the horrible film "Titanic" proving universally that shit can be successful so long as you have an army of tasteless screaming teenage girls on your side. (This hypothesis would later go on to be tested when "Twilight" came out.)

So anyway, Cameron offered a role to his then-wife Linda Hamilton A.K.A. Sarah Connor. Well Linda turned down the role apparently to further pursue her successful acting career (that's a joke) and the role was given to Cathy Bates who to this day remains the only person in that whole goddamn movie who actually manages to act. But I digress, so anyway, long story short Cameron ended up sleeping with on of the actresses and Linda Hamilton won the rights to the "Terminator" films in the divorce.

Now surely, "Terminator" being Linda's only memorable role, she's going to make sure that the series is treated with the utmost respect and care, right? Well, according to "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" the answer to that question is a most emphatic "fuck no!"

So this was the chance to make everybody forget the third movie. Arnold is busy ruling California with an iron fist so he's out and that's for the best. Nick Stahl was politely asked to fuck off, that's 2 for 2. And they hired... the guy who directed the "Charlie's Angels" movies to direct.... okay, now you're just trying to fuck shit up.

So after hiring McG (A monicker that implies he's Irish, a gangbanger, AND a douchebag) they approaced Christian Bale, hoping for him to play the role of the terminator for this movie. But Bale said, "You know what, why don't you take this page and a half of dialogue for John Connor and stretch it out to encompass most of the movie, I'll play that."

McG tried to negotiate but then Bale took off his pants and began screaming "I AM BATMAN!" in a raspy voice and proceeded to noogie the fuck out of him. The producers eventually agreed to rewrite the script so he would quit giving McG swirlies and asking him if he liked Huey Lewis and the News and proclaiming that professionally they were "fucking done." And thus "Terminator Clusterfuck" was born.

So, let me see if I can try and piece this jigsaw puzzle together in a way that makes a modicum of sense. So, it's the future and John Connor is not leading the resistance at all, in fact he's getting bossed around a bunch by Michael Ironsides and anyone else who fits the stereotypical grizzled-army-commander template. He finds out about a signal that can be used to stop the machines and decides to field test it. Flash on over to LA where Marcus Wright, a convicted murderer who we met in the prologue with a completely superfluous appearance from Helena Bonham Carter, walks on screen naked and screams. We immediatly know he's a Terminator cause that's how this shit works, also because they told us he was one in the trailer.

Marcus meets Kyle Reese who gets kidnapped by robots and he hooks up with super-hot downed pilot Blair (played by Moon Bloodgood, who is apparently a night elf) and then trek on over to an inevitable confrontation between Connor and Wright. This confrontation is both needlessly epic and inevitably homo-erotic.

So some shit goes down, some more stuff blows up, the Arnold-bot shows up for reasons unexplained and the movie ends with a kind of weird ending. But given the alternative I think it's obvious that this turd was polished as much as can be reasonably expected.

They're totally about to kiss.

So, Christian Bale is not the star of this movie despite what he and the producers clearly want you to believe. I think he's finally going the way of Kevin Spacey and slowly selling out as this performance is at best "good." His role in the movie feels like it was written in last minute and even the part that was written into the script originally just isn't overly impressive (we get to watch another John Connor futiley try to fight against yet another T-800: oh gee fire didn't work, maybe you should try punching it!)

Contrary to Bale, Sam Worthington is actually quite good, oh sure he's a bit two-dimensional and badass. But on the scale of cool Terminators he falls somewhere between the T-1000 and the T-RiverTam. Even in his 2-dimensional glory he actually manages to be a compelling protagonist. This would work better if he wasn't interrupted every 15-minutes by Bale whispering dramatically into a walkie-talky.

Anton Yelchin is 2-for-2 on franchise destroying sequels. Not only does he actually manage to look like Michael Biehn but he manages to have that raspy voice without it feeling forced. He seems to have studied the part and it's easy to believe that Yelchin's character in this film eventually becomes Biehn's in the first movie.

Moon Bloodgood and Bryce Dallas Howard serve no purpose and could have been entirely removed from this movie without anything important having changed. I don't know about Bloodgood but Howard is too good of an actor to be relegated to such a small bland role.

Oh, park a helicopter on top of them and shoot them in the face, Sarah Connor should have just tried that.

Despite my annoyance with Christian Bale, McG, James Cameron, and really everybody who brought this into existence not to mention my overwhelming indifference for seeing the robot war, there are a lot of things in this movie that actually work.

For one, the post-apocalyptic atmosphere works perfectly. Everything feels suitably desolate and barren and despite the fact that they ignore everything that Kyle Reese said in the first movie (I.E. that they fight during the day and young-Reese says that Hunter Killers hunt best at night despite the fact that old-Reese said that the resistance only fights at night.) Things are suitably explodey and filled with all sorts of different kinds of killer robots but that help is also a hinderance.

Some of the T-1s are still hanging around from "Rise of the Machines" but not many, perhaps ED-209 threatened to sue for copyright infringement, I don't know. But we also get to see the Hunter Killers from the opening of T2. There are water snake terminators, giant people grabbing Terminators with motorcycles in their legs. Yes you read that correctly, there are evil robot motorcycles.

Now, this movie did do something that the T2 changed and T3 ruined entirely. For the first time since the first movie the T-600s are scary and all I can say is it's about fucking time. Finally the T-600 looks like it has some size and weight to it and not a very elaborate animatronic puppet that could break in a stiff wind. Honestly the T-1000 was cool but far from scary and the T-X was just fucking pathetic so it's nice to feel a sense of at least mild fear from them again. But of course my big problem is with the lone T-800 in this movie.

So the Arnold-bot shows up for no real reason (unless he's fulfilling the prophecy he gave in T3, but it doesn't really come to pass as he said it would and what happens would break continuity and end with past-Connor totally dead) but then decides to break continuity entirely. You see, thus far in the movie the T-600s have been uncharacteristically weak, they die far too easy seeing as it took a hydraulic press, a vat of molten iron, and a nuclear blast to kill them in past films respectively. So when Arnold-Bot gets a vat of molten iron poured on him I was understandably confused when he didn't fucking die. That shit killed the T-1000, why is the lesser-model surviving from it. Does this mean we're going to be seeing an even more powerful T-1000 in a future sequel? Someone call Robert Patrick, he's not busy Governating anything! (I'm sorry Kristana Loken, but you can eat shit and die.)

Other than that it's action-packed, not as bloody as it should be but at least much ballsier than T3. I was kind of bothered and annoyed by the gratuitous line quotes ("I'll be back", "Come with me if you want to live", "What day is it, what year?") and there were far too many T3 references (Mrs. John Connor, the Arnold Bot, the Terminator nuclear fuel cells, the T1) as hoping McG would ignore that movie and just move on.

Pictured: Scary

It's an entertaining and suitably desolate and dangerous, but it never really feels like a Terminator movie and that's really what hurts it. It's still twice as good as T3 but if you're a hardcore fan that maintains the series ended at T2 this won't change your mind.

McG almost seemed to get it and he's got two more sequels to figure it out. Mr. G, if you're reading this (and you're totally not because I know only like 3 people read this) my first advice is to beat away Christian Bale's ego with a big stick (use fire if you must) and try and write a movie that meshes with your idea as well as Cameron's. I fully believe you can do this if you just try harder.

I give "Terminator Salvation" a 3 out of 5. There's nothing really wrong with it but there's certainly nothing right either.

Star Trek (2009)

Directed by: J.J. Abrams

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Eric Bana

Other Actors of Note: Leonard Nimoy, Winona Ryder, Tyler Perry, Oz Perkins

Plot: A chronicle of the early days of James T. Kirk and his fellow USS Enterprise crew members.


Hey, remember how back in my "Twilight" review I gave Trekkies a pass on the grounds that the Twunts are rabid lunatics with no souls and serious emotional issues? Well, before you all get too cocky thinking you'd get off scot free, it's your turn.

So "Star Trek" is a sequel/prequel/reboot/camp stove/flash light to the entire Trek series. And while it does follow the events of "Star Trek: Nemesis" it's the new extreme "Cool Ranch" to the original film's "Nacho Cheese" flavor.

So apparently the studio execs realized that we had pretty much milked the teat of the adventures of Captain Picard, Worf, Data, the black guy off "Reading Rainbow", that guy with the beard, that one chick, the other chick, that other guy, and that other guy till it started squirting out blood, and rather than make another sequel they made a deal with Mephistopheles to restore order to the series. He agreed, hiring J.J. Abrams to un-fuck things, but as we "Spider-Man" fans know... Mephistopheles doesn't work for free, he had certain terms...


Okay lets ignore J.J. Abrams and Satan for right now, we'll get back to them later. Right now I want to talk about the cast:

Okay, we'll start with Chris Pine. I HATED the idea of Chris Pine playing Kirk, he had the look of an actor whose Starfleet uniform would have a popped collar and would constantly call Spock names like "Bro'sef", "Bro'mosexual", and "Bro'lcun." Fortunately I was dead fucking wrong and I salute J.J. Abrams for finding someone so perfect for the role.

Now Pine isn't a perfect reproduction of Shatner. First of all in this continuity Kirk grew up without a father so he's a bit more rebellious and cocky (if such a thing is possible) than the original, but it never feels forced or too different. The fact that Pine bears a strange resemblance to Shatner circa 1966 doesn't hurt anything either. Pine owns the movie and really makes for a good leading man. I truly hope that if this franchise doesn't take off (or even if it does for that matter) that Pine will get a lot more roles in future movies. It's good to know there are still actors under the age of 35 who can act.

Karl Urban was the one that I could not accept under any circumstances ever ever ever ever. I looked at his past roles in films like "Doom", "The Chronicles of Riddick", and "Pathfinder" and went "What the fuck is this cocksmith doing playing McCoy?" But you know what? Miraculously he fits McCoy perfectly, and no one is more surprised than me, he even manages to be as fuck-ugly as Deforest Kelley (and that shit isn't easy!) Urban's role was almost entirely reduced to "wacky side-kick" territory, but just like with Kirk it works very well. I however don't want to see Urban in any more non-Trek movies.

I am sad to say that Zachary Quinto (the actor I was actually okay with) is mildly disappointing as Spock. Now this isn't to say that he doesn't play Spock well, he just fell short of my expectations I suppose. Spock seems a bit more prickish than normal and much less sage-like. Which I get it that he's young Spock, but Kirk's supposed to be the dickish hothead, not Spock.

We do get the right Spock though because Leonard Nimoy reprises his role as "Spock Prime" (who I'm guessing turns into a fire truck and leads the Autobots to defeat Unicron after the credits roll.) Nimoy is as good as he ever was (that amount being "great") and commands the screen when he's on it. He even gives the intro narration (strangely they chose the intro from "Next Generation" rather than the original series) as we watch the Enterprise head off into space.

Zoe Saldana plays a more than capable Uhara. Admittedly this Uhara is the typical sassy smart movie chick which makes it all that more awkward when she falls into Uhara's intended role of "Sit in this chair and look pretty, every now and then swivel around and give the viewers false hopes of seeing up your skirt." It's not that Saldana can't act, in fact she plays a more than capable Uhara, it's just that her character is vastly under-utilized which is entirely the writer (and to some extent Abrams') fault. There's also a romance between she and Spock part way through that just sorta pops up out of nowhere, but it's mostly ignored and you get past it.

Anton Yelchin does a good job as entirely superfluous Chekov. His part in the movie is to talk funny and tell us things we already know. Once again, not the actor's fault, it's the writer's. (To be honest I'm kinda surprised they didn't just make him go "Nuclear Wessels" over and over and over again.)

Now, Simon Pegg has been kind of controversial as Scotty. The poor bastard doesn't get introduced until halfway through the movie and then they just kind of haphazardly cram him in there and hope nobody notices. Now if you think about it, the way he enters the movie works (and they had to have some way to introduce Nimoy so he was necessary) but it still kinda sucks as Pegg steals the show (as always) and minus his little bumpy Ewok sidekick he's perfect in his role. Some say he's "too jokey" but Scotty was always one of the more lighthearted memebers of the crew to begin with. Oh, and yes, he does say "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Cap'n!" This film needs a whole lot more Scotty.

John Cho was the only casting I didn't like in this movie as Sulu. It's not that Cho doesn't play the part well. It's not that he's Korean instead of Japanese. The problem is that Cho just doesn't feel right for the part, it seems like they just cast the first capable Asian actor they could find and that really hurts things. But seeing as Sulu's entire purpose is to pull a lever back and forth for 90% of the movie (the part where he's not doing Kung Fu and "fencing" with his collapsible samurai sword) so it doesn't become tired.

Now, Eric Bana plays a suitably angry and menacing Romulan in Nero. The problem is that he's so damn 2-dimensional that if he turns side-ways you can't see him. He's a Romulan from the future that's pissed at Spock so he went back in time to kill everybody because his planet blew up. So he's decided to suck every planet into a black hole via drilling a hole into each planet's core using his uber-menacing giant ship (for some arbitrary reason) and injecting some red goop that creates black holes and must be extracted with a comically large syringe.

Also: Tyler Perry is in this movie. What the fuck?!


Abrams (aside from tossing in his usual "Slusho" reference) throws in a lot of nods to the old series. Besides the Spock intro and Scotty's famous line we also have the Vulcan shoulder grab thingy, Kirk banging a green chick, and the horrible death of a red shirt! These all add nice little asides to the film and fortunately never become distracting. But lets not let my fountain of praise distract from the mistakes.

Abrams tries to make the point that this is the future and as such there are lots of alien races hanging about. The problem is the races seem less "Star Trek" and more "Star Wars" particularly the bumpy Ewok and the long-faced weirdo red herring hanging out at the bar.

Partway through the film Kirk gets jettisoned out of the ship onto an Ice Planet that might as well be called "Not-Hoth" and gets chased by what looks like a 4-legged Wompa beast which then gets eaten by a red "Cloverfield" monster that proceeds to follow Kirk through a super elaborate chase sequence. When a mysterious stranger in a parka chases the monster off, I expected him to turn around, revealing himself as Han Solo, and go "Shit, you're not Luke" before running off.

Also Abrams paints Iowa as a desolate wasteland filled with nothing but hay bales and dickhead highway patrolman. Which is fucking spot on. But nowhere in Iowa is there a giant gorge for Little Kirk to "Thelma and Louise" his space-Mustang into. Seriously the deepest spot in Iowa is maybe 50 feet.

These small problems aside the film is visually stunning and there's not a set in this flic that doesn't look picture perfect.

The story falls back on the old chestnut of time travel that we've already seen in past Trek films but even if the idea has been used it works in paying tribute to the fans, the non-fans, and anyone else. This time the situation doesn't get miraculously un-fucked at the end. The crew doesn't go back and fix things, a parallel universe is now permanently formed and Spock is trapped in it with his younger self and some other bad shit that I wont spoil happens.

The plot's a bit simple and retreads a lot of familiar territory but it does a suitably good job of re-introducing the characters and entertains. Which, in the end, isn't that really all it needs to do?

Now, about your precious fucking continuity. Everybody finds a reason to bitch about this, even Crybaby Central had to put in their 2 fucking cents on this. I don't know how I can make this any clearer than the movie did. This film takes place in an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, the events at the beginning of the film takes your precious canon and throws it the fuck away. Do you know why they did this? Because you whiny fucks bitch and moan in every single movie about "continuity errors" in everything from "First Contact" to "Wrath of Khan" and that's not even bringing up the numerous TV shows.

You mouth-breathing fuckheads and the ever-growing tome that's being written every time something vaguely involving Trek comes up alienates new viewers and it's a reason that the only show that's picked up any new fans in the last 20 years was "Enterprise" which your pissing and moaning got canceled.

J.J. Abrams was wise to just hit control, alt, delete and restart this thing as it brings on new fans who may one day learn to appreciate the original series and maybe even stop making fun of you!

Yes that's right portly 30-something wearing a way-too-tight Slayer t-shirt. People will understand you're a sweet nice guy who really means no harm and just needs a nice girl to remind you to wipe the cheeto dust off your hands and bathe every once in a while.

Yes, bespectacled girl with messy hair wearing a baggy sweater and sensible shoes. People will start to look past the Vulcan ears you insist wearing everywhere and see it as "cute" rather than "fucking weird" and see the true beauty within you despite the fact that you smell like ben gay and cheap perfume.

Yes, angry web-forum troll, they will see the black heart that lurks within your dark exterior and destroy you for the monster you truly are.

In simpler terms, this is what happens when you ignore continuity and start over:

This is what happens when you don't:

Any questions?


This movie did exactly what it needed to do. It's a fun, compelling, and entertaining film that panders to its fans and brings in new fans whilst breathing new life int oa series that was long past dead. It actually made me interested in "Star Trek" again, which I haven't been since I was 10.

I give "Star Trek" a 5 out of 5.