So, a long, long day before watching the new Star Trek (again) with my little brother and his girlfriend, followed by finally watching Chocolate after I got home. As these are the first movies I’m covering, I think it’ll be fair to point out that I’m rarely, if ever, going to get too detailed about the stuff I’m watching, unless its very important to my overall experince with the film. The same’s going to hold true for most shows as well I think. Both because I don’t have that much time on my hands, and because I know I’m the only one that doesn’t like getting spoiled.
So. Second viewing of Star Trek, a week after seeing it initially, is it just as good the second time around? The answer is a resounding yes. This one’s an instant classic and well worth your time and money to go see it on the big screen. The casting’s perfect, the effects are gorgeous (while a bit overboard with the lens flares), and the soundtrack, oh my, oh my, oh my. Between “ROAR! (Overture)” over the end of Cloverfield and his Star Trek score, I think Michael Giacchino is officially my favorite composer and I have a lot of stuff to watch/rewatch to listen for him now.
Star Trek was one of my earlier things growing up, as we all gathered around the TV Friday nights and ate dinner while watching The Next Generation, pretty much from the premiere clear through to the final episode. I devoured the books at the local libraries, watched the movies, collected the toys(the big light-up Enterprise-D was the first thing I ever put on layaway, having to scrape together the money for it from my meager paper route earnings before I could call it my own), played the CCG. It was all I cared about for several years. The Next Generation was the center of my world.
Don’t get me wrong, DS9 was great too, but as the seasons went on, the airing became erratic and I lost the thread of the last season or two. And Voyager came on, and Chakotay started his Native American Spirit Magic, and my mother said nope, none of that, not in our uber-born again-Christian household. Fake space religions and adventures and violence? A-Okay. But you start getting a bit shamanistic with something having real world roots, that’s it, full stop, end of the line, no more Voyager. I only ever managed to sneak a few episodes after that with my brother after school. My teenage self never got to partake in the nerdgasm that was 7 of 9. The Next Generation movies were a bit hit or miss, and never had the same magic as the TOS-based films. And Enterprise, well, I think I made it through 2 episodes of that and decided I had better things to do with my time in college.
And then we get the J.J. Abrams Star Trek and all of a sudden I kind of want to polish off that badge of Star Trek nerd and wear it with pride, because god damn that was the good stuff. As countless other nerds are rejoicing, its a wonderous reboot that stays true to the vision of Trek, respects its history, and sets off to boldly go where the series hasn’t before. And it was awesome. I fucking loved it.
No, not the romance movie or any of the others going by the same name, this Chocolate is a Muay Thai martial arts movie from Baa-Ram-Ewe, the group responsible for the insanity that is Ong-Bak and The Protector, both starring Tony Jaa. While Chocolate carries over many similar elements of structure and the same overall fighting style, the story (which I really liked) does a good job of setting itself apart from the other two. Still, I can’t help but compare it to them (especially when straight movie clips from them show up here and there).
While the choreography, set pieces, and level of action match up with the prior films, Chocolate, and more specifically JeeJa Yanin, isn’t on the same level as Tony Jaa‘s stuff. She’s quite competent, but doesn’t have the speed, power, or presence that he does, or at least the cinematography didn’t do a good job of capturing it. So many of the movements felt like they were playing out in slow-motion without actually using slow-motion footage that I thought I must have suddenly gained some sort of hyper-awareness from my recent readdiction to Guilty Gear, as it all felt 15-20% than Tony Jaa‘s stunts.
Again, she clearly knows the moves, her acting outside of the fighting was great, and the outtakes over the credits certainly show they aren’t playing around, but let’s give her a few more years to develop. I think she’ll do some great stuff down the line, but based on what I saw, she’s not there yet. Worth watching, debatably worth owning, beautiful on the blu-ray, but let’s get on with Ong-Bak 2 shall we?
