I always loved Greek myth, mainly because it was predicated on the idea that our cosmic beginnings were just as filled with marital strife, petty greed and familial resentment as our normal lives are. The gods of old were just human beings with more power and cool toys, and they acted accordingly.

In this way, there’s actually a lot to recommend “Wrath of the Titans,” the completely unnecessary sequel to “Clash of the Titans,” which was the completely unnecessary re-make of 1981′s “Clash of the Titans.” Liam Neeson, reprising his role as Zeus, Ralph Fiennes as Hades and Edgar Ramirez as Ares all play their roles as normal people who happen to have the the creative powers of gods. They are jealous and hold grudges. They are capable to human love, and simple Freudian motivations.

The fact that all of them display atrocious acting skill in a story that makes little sense at the beginning and has little resolution at the end is almost beside the point. Almost.

“Wrath of the Titans,” is truly as ridiculous as you could imagine, with stodgy awkward dialogue and unnatural delivery from all those listed above, as well as leading man Perseus (Sam Worthington). There seems to be a beat between every line that comes out of the mouths of these worthy gentlemen, giving the film a quality of being a well-produced school play.

According to the story, the demigod Perseus is a now a widower with a young son, living his life out in a fishing village. Zeus, his father, comes to him and tells him that there something brewing in the state of Tartarus, and it might be Kronos. Or something. Frankly, I wasn’t paying that much attention during that part. Anyway, Zeus is kidnapped, and sapped of his power by a big Tim Burtony tree in Tartarus, and Perseus will have to save him before Earth is devoured by chimera. Or…something. Anyway Zeus’ power wakes up Kronos, and he’s trying to escape Tartarus, and destroy the Earth? And Rosamund Pike is Andromeda and her soldiers are fighting the Chimera? And there’s a big labyrinth to get to Tartarus?

I’m sorry what were you saying Liam Neeson? I dozed off for a bit there. Oh right, this is an insane plot created by three different writers who seem to have only a vague idea of what a complete narrative looks like.

It’s not all bad news. First of all, it’s not nearly as long as I had anticipated. Pike kills it as the warrior queen Andromeda (and looks both incredibly sexy and also like she could pull your throat out if you talk back to her.) And Bill Nighy, the brave soul, plays the exiled god Hephaestus as a burnt-out hippie who’s been alone a little too long with just his thoughts and his weed. The man could make an HBO soft-core porno seem charming and watchable, so this is a cakewalk for him.

You know what I would love to see? I would love to see a Greek epic centered around an awkward and unsettling family reunion. Zeus would preside over everything as the blowhard family patriarch, Ares would be sulking in the corner stabbing at the roast, Athena and Hera would be snarking passive-aggressively over who’s the better cook. Kronos would be the slightly demented grandfather in the wheelchair at the end of the table, telling racist jokes, cracking on Aphrodite’s fake tits and making everyone uncomfortable. Hephaestus could still be played by Bill Nighy, needling the conservative Poseidon into a political argument and slipping food to Cerberus the three-headed dog under the table. The gods are just a dysfunctional family, like anyone else’s. So let’s just can the crappy 3D, and the chimera fights and the magic god weapons and watch these gods do something truly amazing: tolerate each other for several hours.

Universal Studios is not planning to release the movie “Battleship” until May, but it has recently released the third trailer for the film.

Starring Liam Neeson, Rihanna,Taylor Kitsch and Brooklyn Decker, “Battleship” is based on the popular Battleship game by Hasbro. People on Earth are trying to fight off alien invaders. This trailer is the first to give a glimpse of what the aliens look like.

The alien species, called the “Regents,” is trying to construct a source of power in the ocean, but they encounter a naval fleet. Taking place in the Hawaiian Islands at Pearl Harbor, the film informs the audience of the locations of the ships on both sides of the battle.

There is absolutely no reason in the world why an action movie in which Liam Neeson punches a wolf in the mouth should be any good at all.

The very premise seems like sheer B-movie schlock, another black mark in Neeson’s already questionable late career. Joe Carnahan, the writer and director of the film, has a resume that includes a disastrous version of “The A-Team” and “Smokin Aces”, a hyperactive Vegas thriller. “The Grey” should be the movie you rent from Redbox and watch while drunk, stuffing cheese doodles in your maw and laughing when Neeson makes Wolfman puns.

And yet…and yet. Carnahan, in a surprising move, chose not to make this into another lame, faux post-modern black hole of cheese. He made a film. A very good film actually, using stripped-down and rugged camerawork and sound to tell a story about primitive forces.

The 6 men who dominate the movie are pipeline workers in Alaska, heading back to the lower-48 for a break. Their leader Ottway (Liam Neeson) was tasked with protecting the pipeline and its workers from wild animals, so when their plane goes down in the middle of a wolf pack’s territory it’s only him who has any kind of expertise to lead them out.

The main characters seem undomesticated even before they are thrown into the merciless wilderness- Ottway himself is a man on the edge, haunted by a lost love and verging on suicide. The others are a motley crew of deadbeats, ex-cons or similar, hopeless cases who come to work in Alaska because no else will take them. But their breed of wildness seems positively tame when they are left alone in the woods, being stalked by a band of timber wolves (the wolves appear to be mainly computer-generated, but that doesn’t make them any less frightening).

Carnahan knows his way around an action scene, and infuses everything from a plane crash, to a wolf attack, to a jump across a ravine with blunt horror and panic. For once I was unconcerned that the camera was shaking and obscuring my vision, because I have a feeling that a plane crash and a wolf attack wouldn’t seem very clear to the person experiencing it. He matches the bluntness of the camerawork with precision sound, eschewing music most of the time and just using a howling, relentless winter wind as the background.

Neeson is positively electrifying, playing a ravaged husk of a man who wants to end his life even as he’s thrown into the odd situation of trying to keep himself and his comrades alive. And while everyone probably will pay their $10 plus tax to see Liam Neeson box a wolf with broken glass taped to his knuckles (and note that scene is actually not what it seems in the trailers), I find him even more riveting when he is doing quieter things, like telling an injured man that he is going to die, or staring worriedly at a thermos of dwindling jet fuel they are using to start their precious fires.

Carnahan obviously owes a lot to the Werner Herzog, who’s made an entire career about discussing man’s strange relationship with the natural world. Carnahan even references Herzog’s “Grizzly Man”, though it’s very telling that the reference is when a character refers to it as “that movie about the fag that loves bears.” There is little Disneyfication of the natural world here, and the wild is considered beautiful, vast, unknowable and unmerciful. And the emotional devastation and fear you feel comes not with the first wolf death (which is expected) but the realization that if these men are unable to start a fire in a snowstorm they are all going to die- not from a villainous wolf, or a complicated human scheme, but by the immutable fact of the cold. Fire: you live. No fire: you die. There is nothing more primitive, more basic, or more animal than that.

SAN DIEGO — For the past 40 years, Comic-Con International has showcased celebrities and television veterans from Angelina Jolie to Joss Whedon. So it is a surprise to many that filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki of the beloved animations “Princess Mononoke” and “My Neighbor Totoro” has never made an appearance at Comic-Con. In fact, the elusive filmmaker didn’t even attend the Academy Awards ceremony when he won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for “Spirited Away” (“Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi”) in 2003.

Miyazaki's attendance at Comic-Con meant attendees finally got to ask questions and gain insight into what inspires this gifted animator (Blast staff photo/Conception Allen)

When the news was made official that Miyazaki planned an appearance to promote the American release of the film “Ponyo” (“Gake no ue no Ponyo”) fans of his films rejoiced all over the world. This also meant attendees would finally get to ask questions and gain insight into what inspires this gifted animator, whose beautiful sketches and storyboards have attracted the attention of Disney’s John Lasseter. Disney is producing and distributing the film worldwide.

Ponyo is a fantastic story full of magic and drama told through the view of Ponyo, a mermaid who leaves home and becomes marooned on shore without help until a young boy named Sosuke saves her. What gradually unravels is a love story full of lush imagery.

On Friday, audiences were greeted with an elaborate clip from the film which points to Miyazaki’s imaginative scope using color, movement and pace. In what is best described as a roaring undulant sea, shifting into shapes of large gigantic fish, a girl (named Ponyo) rides atop the crests effortlessly and freely. It is surreal, stark and beautiful. Alongside this image are a woman and child racing away from the threatening sea in a small vehicle. Audiences can feel the intensity as the waters tower and crash closely behind them.

It will be a memorable scene that American audiences will enjoy, especially when we hear it paired with the voice talents of Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Frankie Jonas, Cate Blanchett and Betty White for the English version of the film.

Ponyo is a more traditional animated feature, not done in 3D or with computer graphics. When Lasseter was asked about the future of 2D and its relationship with rise of 3D animation, he said: “I’m always inspired by new technology. (We’re) the studio that completed the first animated film, and what I think is important is to let the filmmakers really understand the technology of what you can and can’t do with it.”

During the exclusive press round-table meeting, Blast asked Miyazaki about the nature elements in “Ponyo” and what else we’ll see in the film.

“The way nature and environment has been reflected in ‘Ponyo’ is that I thought Ponyo’s natural strength was connected to the sea and the ocean — the strength that the sea and ocean have,” Miyazaki said. “In many ways, if you look down deep, the strength of people is connected to nature and the depth of nature. And so, that is why when Ponyo comes to the land. She uses the strength of the sea to come. It’s not really a film that has environmental issues or ecological issues in it as much as the strength and the power of nature that I have conveyed.”

Miyazaki isn’t trying to make a statement about Global Warming or about the environment or politics. His film simply reminds us about the beauty of nature and the power of man’s own inner spirit — and that the two can be beautifully combined.

This combination of art, science, film and animation makes it fitting that Miyazaki has been given Comic-Con’s Ink Pot Award, one of the highest honors a guest can receive at this event.

Most of the thrillers made within the past few years have been somber affairs. They are grey, de-saturated and sterile compositions, with vaguely political overtones and a penchant for upper class intrigue (think “Michael Clayton”, “The Insider”, etc.).

And then there’s Luc Besson and Pierre Morel, the masterminds behind the original “District B-13″ and respective writer and director of “Taken,” the new thriller with Liam Neeson. Morel and Besson are great men in the world of what I affectionately call “Art Euro-trash.” These filmmakers like filthy, tawdry thrillers, with villains that are unambiguously evil, so much so that we don’t look askance as the hero does really, really, terrible things to them. The result is a frenetic, satisfying, though ultimately absurd film.

The girl is this case is Kim, and her father Brian (Liam Neeson) is the man who goes after her. It’s given out in the beginning (through some awkwardly-phrased dialogue) that Brian was largely absent during Kim’s childhood, and is now trying to get back in touch. He helps see Kim off to a trip to Paris with a friend, which immediately goes awry, and Kim is kidnapped by evil Albanians.

Conveniently, Brian is an ex-CIA operative, so he’s got a leg up in the situation. He quickly tracks down his daughter’s kidnappers one by one, in a series of scenes which alternate between beautifully composed shots of the Parisian slums and ill-advised forays into shaky camera techniques. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if your name is not Paul Greengrass, stay the hell away from a hand-held camera.

Neeson is strangely riveting in this film. His portrayal of Brian, especially in the beginning scenes, is akin to that of a wounded bear. Brian’s a man filled with regrets- about his treatment of his ex-wife (Famke Janssen), his absence from his daughter’s life, his work for the government. But as soon as his daughter is taken all his self-doubt goes out the window, and he is simply a killing machine with one goal. Is it plausible? No. But is interesting? Goodness, yes.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about “Taken” is it’s rating: the MPAA board inexplicably gave the film a PG-13 rating. There is a lot of leeway and randomness to the way the board makes their decisions, but I have a hard time believing that any reasonable person would give this movie anything other than an R rating. I’ve got a high threshold for this kind of stuff, but I could understand some parents getting the vapors over a few scenes. At one point we are treated to a tour of a whorehouse in a hellish construction site, where emaciated prostitutes lay prone on their beds, dead or strung out on drugs. Even leaving aside the fact that Neesan’s character kills a lot of people (par for the course), there are scenes of torture that are too brutal (and patly rationalized) for my fine sensibilities.

But there is an allure to the pursuit of unambiguous evil. It’s hard to find a thriller now that doesn’t have some moral quandary attached, some Big Questions to ask. And I have to say, it’s a lot of fun watching Neesan hunt down evil Eastern Europeans. We haven’t done that since the Cold War, and I’ve missed the firm (albeit naive) certainty of it. For once, here is a thriller that shoots first and asks questions later.