If I haven’t been inspired to write about movies lately, it’s for the simple reason that so much of what’s offered these days is uninspiring. Audiences are so desperate for a good time, a distraction, a laugh that they make bad movies popular. Are the pickings so slim that a nominal comedy about a hypoglycemic security guard (Paul Blart: Mall Cop), a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a remake of a Roger Corman road movie (Fast and Furious), and a kiddie flick whose entire scenario is represented in the title (Monsters vs. Aliens) represent the three most desirable choices in mainstream entertainment? Is that really the best we can do? 

An undiscriminating viewer will not care what he sees as long as it diverts for a while, but a cinephile must choose his battles wisely. His hard-earned dollar must not be spent in support of an industry that has no respect for his taste or intelligence. I saw exactly three—three!—typical, middle-of-the-road Hollywood movies in the last ten weeks and that seems about as dry a spell as I can remember.

Of course I saw Star Trek (on Mother’s Day, with the entire family by my side), and of course I was entertained, but at the end of the day it didn’t provide the kind of sustenance that lasts all summer long. The director is J.J. Abrams, chief architect of the brilliant series Lost, a TV man with a TV man’s strong suits: a feel for character, a flair for joke-making, a writerly sensitivity to things like story and structure. He knows how to provide a good time. On the other hand, he’s got a TV man’s limitations. His shooting style consists mainly of quavering close-ups, a visual strategy that tends to induce a sensation of dizziness, if not dementia. The action, while undeniably thrilling in spurts, is allowed to go on a bit long and a bit loudly. Abrams dazzles you so thoroughly with flashing light and rumbling sound that it takes a while to realize he’s short-changed you intellectually and emotionally. The philosophical inquisitiveness that defined the original TV series is discarded for a standard revenge motif, and the famed Kirk-Spock relationship that provided a sturdy anchor for the first few movies (especially the second and third ones) is here only hinted at. Still, it is a good time, and the cast is shrewdly selected for their physical proximity to the original troupe, one of whom makes a triumphal appearance about midway.

Reaching a little further back, I took a chance on Knowing, and received a mixed bag (always better than an empty bag, but even more maddening). Alex Proyas directed, and he concocts one or two genuinely nightmarish sequences. One in particular, involving a plane crash in the middle of a rain-soaked, traffic-jammed freeway, has the certainty of a bad dream where you know what’s coming but nevertheless feel powerless to escape it. This sense of helplessness more or less describes the plot of the film: Nicolas Cage (in another of his catatonic performances) has in his possession a string of numbers predicting forthcoming natural disasters, including the absolute end of the world, and can’t get anyone to believe him. The story may be similar on paper to a Night Gallery episode entitled “The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes,” but the tenor is closer to M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, which also uses an outlandish sci-fi premise in order to address the value of human life in a seemingly chaotic world. This one gets credit for going further than you expect, but it’s still a stockpile of apocalyptic clichés that leaves many threads untied. Pop theologians might be intrigued by the biblical allusions (including a reference to Ezekiel that describes an unearthly visitation), but you’ll have to work extra hard to pound them into a coherent framework, which is both the film’s ambition and it’s greatest failing.  

Right before Knowing, in fact the same day as Knowing, I looked at Duplicity, which seemed to be the only film not aimed at teenagers playing at the local Edwards that particular weekend. It stars a prime Clive Owen and a slightly past her prime Julia Roberts as scheming lovers who infiltrate two rival corporations in order to secure a formula for a revolutionary product (the nature of the product is tantalizingly withheld until late in the game). Tony Gilroy, who demonstrates with his second film as writer-director that he is truly a director (we already knew he was a writer), messes around with the structure, probing deeper into the story with carefully placed flashbacks, without annoying you too much. It’s smooth and enjoyable and not too deep, and it doesn’t seem to linger even at 125 minutes, which is about my limit barring Clint Eastwood or Peter Weir.