Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Dark Tower

Stephen King’s epic world-spanning Gunslinger series has delighted the imaginations of millions since it first published in 1982. Encompassing eight books so far, The Dark Tower would have made a more compelling miniseries than a feature film. However, try they did and by pulling the characters from the book, but positioning it slightly outside the continuity, they can enable fans of the series to enjoy it without feeling like anything was short changed.

Idris Elba takes on the role of Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger. Seeking vengeance against the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey), he finds help in the form of a young boy (Tom Taylor) whose been having visions of the other realms, including the Man in Black’s plot to destroy the Dark Tower which protects the universe from dark outside forces. The pair are connected through their multi-layered desire to both protect the Dark Tower and rid the universe of the grim specter of death that is the Man in Black.

Solid production values and occasional bits of humor help elevate a rather cheaply constructed narrative. Not that the Dark Tower series isn’t a most fascinating subject for mass market entertainment, but the film is conventional to a fault. Writer and producer Akiva Goldsman is the culprit. His screenwriting capabilities are perfunctory at best and although the film moves smoothly over the course of its hour-thirty-five length, it feels like each event is haphazardly connected and designed not necessarily to further the plot to create tension where it doesn’t feel natural.

Red Dawn

As far as remakes go, this one is pretty good. Based on the 1984 Cuban/Russian-invasion drama of the same name, Red Dawn pits a scrappy group of youngsters against a massive invading army. This time, it’s the North Koreans with the aide of the Russians. The location has also changed shifting from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest.

The prior film starred young talents like Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey. This time around, we have a new crop of youths that include Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, Josh Peck, and Adrienne Palicki. Other than Hutcherson and Hemsworth, the talented in this five-year-old drama didn’t have nearly the success of the quintet at the top of the prior film’s ticket. The reason is simple. Although the first film was characterized by bad acting, those actors were relative neophytes. Hemsworth had already risen as a star with Thor. Hutcherson, on the other hand, had been a noteworthy presence for almost a decade, including his brilliant work in Bridge to Terabithia and The Kids Are All Right. Swayze had only The Outsiders alongside Howell, who also had an inconsequential role in E.T.; Thompson had All the Right Moves; Sheen had familial history (his father is noted actor Martin Sheen); and Grey had nothing. They would, of course become major stars of the 1980s. Peck and Palicki have done almost nothing of prominence since.

Hemsworth and Hutcherson showed even in this that they were superior actors to all of the original’s stars. This film also managed to escape the cheesiness that often plagued the original. The score, however, was entirely inferior here. The original film was built on a rather weak structure. Events never seemed organically connected. They felt almost like separate, disjointed fragments. Here, the screenplay shifts focus through a progressing series of events, but they all feel interconnected as if event A must happen for Event B to take place and so forth, not Event A happening, then Event B, but their connection was tangential at best. This manifests itself most obviously in the opening scenes of the film where we are introduced to the major characters. From there, things set up and topple like expertly placed dominoes.

The original had a fascinating dynamic built on the spur of the moment. Like here, both films had an explanation given of how unsettled things are around the world, but while the remake was busy introducing characters, the 1984 film was raining troops on an unsuspecting High School. Our characters were developed, in brief, through the action that leads them high into the mountains. That spontaneity might not have worked so well with the remake since it was designed to reminisce on its predecessor and entice audiences with that familiarity. Somewhere between the two films is a rather cunning film wanting to be reconstructed. Perhaps in another 30 years a new attempt will be made when Russia is once again meddling in world affairs trying to bring down the United States.