Now You See Me

Sigh.  Note to anyone doing another movie about magic : start with a good trick, then build to something phenomenal to leave your audience clapping.  Don't start with your best trick, then hope your audience is wowed by a routine light show and blatant hologram stunt as a "finale".  (I could do a hologram stunt.  Especially since I'll be under no obligation to make it look like anything other than a hologram stunt.)  BUT this movie has bigger problems.  You know how in Sixth Sense, when you find out the twist, you look back over the film and think "Oh!  Of course!  How sly!"  Well, when Now You See Me explained how what happened happened, you just think "Well that doesn't make sense.  If that's the solution, this wouldn't have happened here, and he/she wouldn't have done that there."  The brilliance of unexpected solutions is when you look back on the story armed with explanation, the story makes just as much -- if not more -- sense.  Now You See Me thinks it can pull any explanation out of its butt, as if we just weren't watching at all.  Verdict: Movie Rental if You Must

Star Trek Into Darkness

Blasted spoilers.  I had made a concerted effort with this movie to avoid all press.  Turn the channel when an ad came on.  Turn the page when a review is published.  Cover my ears and run screaming from the grocery store when any nearby person starts speaking about it.  And STILL I had heard what was supposed to be a twist in the plot.  Blasted spoilers.  This movie was fun on its face, yes.  But for as much trouble as the franchise went through in order to free itself to explore any plot lines without being beholden to the established history of the original series... well, let's just say it wasted its own time, as well as yours and mine.  But it had fun while wasting it. Verdict: Discount Theatre