Star Trek Beyond
Dir. Justin Lin
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At the beginning of Star Trek Beyond, Captain Kirk is as moody as a teenage drama queen with her cell phone taken away, bemoaning the fact that his life is starting to feel routine and "episodic." He's looking for some kind of purpose, and in many ways his comments reflect the series itself: where does Star Trek fit in today's world? In the late 1960s, the original series presented a Tomorrowland-esque optimal future that seems out of place in today's world of fear-mongering political candidates, and even our superhero films reflect a darker, more cynical view of the world. Beyond is partly a return to form for Star Trek - gone is the perpetual brooding and "rehash-y" elements from JJ Abrams' Into Darkness, with director Justin Lin (Fast & Furious) and writer Simon Pegg again focusing the series on space exploration and working as a team with people who are different in both appearance, personality and philosophy. At the end of the day Star Trek Beyond is still simple-minded popcorn entertainment with its share of problems, but it does thankfully recapture the spirit of Gene Roddenberry's altruistic original series.
The story follows the crew of the USS Enterprise after they are attacked responding to a distress call. The team crash-lands on a mysterious planet (that looks like a cut-rate version of Avatar's Pandora), and become separated, a la Scooby Doo. The ship's assault came from a lizard-looking alien, Krall (Idris Elba unrecognizable under prosethetics), who is after an artifact that may or may not be a weapon that he will use for assuredly un-Christian purposes. So the crew basically has to find each other, get this artifact back, and save the people stationed back at their star base from being potentially annihilated. It's a very basic, uninteresting plot that definitely lacks the more nuanced ethics presented in the best Trek episodes, but what made the film work for me were the characters, who, like in Lin's handling of the Fast and Furious films, feel like a "family."
While the last two Abrams films focused on the Kirk-Spock relationship, here we get a charming and hilarious Spock-Bones relationship. Spock (Zach Quinto), of course, is a vulcan which means he's logical instead of emotional, which gets on the Dr. McCoy's (Karl Urban) nerves; the two of them together is like watching an intergalactic Odd Couple and was by far my favorite aspect of the film. Another fun dynamic rests between Scottie (Simon Pegg) and a new alien character, Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), a badass scavenger who agrees to help find his crew in return for his engineering skills to rebuild her "home," an abandoned early USS ship. Yet again, we see a fun clashing of personalities here (the audience-surrogate nerd in over his head with the "cool" ass-kickin' native), but they learn to help each other and become friends despite their differences which is what Star Trek's all about. Although other characters get the short shrift (Uhura, Sulu, and Anton Yelchin's Chekhov - whose too-young passing at age 27 lingers over the film - are barely given anything to do), it's in these fleeting character moments that gives Beyond the leg up on other science fiction action pictures as of late - I'm looking at you Independence Day: Resurgence.
Rating: B-
Lights Out
Dir. David Sandberg
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In terms of "gimmick" horror movies, Lights Out has a pretty good one: a ghost that appears only in darkness, so you have to stay in the light to survive! Like A Nightmare on Elm Street's "he can only get you while you're sleeping" plot device, Lights Out presents an interesting jumping off point for a horror movie, but unfortunately doesn't deliver anything special. Despite a few cool uses of the "lights" aspect (for instance, the ghost disappears within the muzzle-flash of a gunshot, making it impossible to shoot) and a solid performance from Maria Bello, who commits to a very harrowing role as a mother with mental illness, Lights Out is still a very routine, predictable, throwaway, "jump-scare"-filled supernatural thriller.
When Rebecca (Teresa Palmer) was a little girl, she wasn't sure of what was real or not when the lights went out - whether or not there really was a monster hiding in the closet. Now she's older, she's got a hard rocker boyfriend, and she's moved out on her own, leaving her childhood fears behind. However, it's possible the same entity has come after her younger brother Martin (Gabriel Bateman) - a demon that has a mysterious connection to their mother, who's often forgetful to take her medication. The film tries to take this angle (as do many of these types of films) of Rebecca battling her "personal" demons regarding having a mom that she herself needed to "mother" growing up, alongside an actual, supernatural demon. I give the filmmakers credit for not making the haunting completely arbitrary, but the final product still feels like a cool concept for a short film stretched out for feature length, which is literally what this film is.
While I enjoyed certain aspects of the film, it never come together for me in the end. It's a cut above most of the generic crap-tastic horror flicks that are continually pumped into theaters (I saw a number of their trailers play before this film, i.e. Oujia: Origin of Evil), but just because it's better than its peers doesn't mean Lights Out is necessarily good, it's just a bad time for horror in general. If you want to see the actually good version of this movie, see The Babadook!
Rating: C+
Nerve
Dir. Ariel Schulman & Henry Joost
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It's no mystery that high school teens do stupid things. Just watch any number of 80's comedies and slasher films, and you'll bear witness to a series of increasingly bad decision-making. If these types of movies get on your nerves (see what I did there?), this latest film from Catfish directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost will probably be a complete nightmare for you, as its very premise is predicated on the fact that in the "social media" generation looking for their 15 seconds of fame, our nation's youth are even bigger risk-takers than ever.
High school senior Vee (Emma Roberts) is typically the "mousy" member of her friend-circle, but tired of living in the sidelines, she decides to join the popular underground online game Nerve, which challenges players to accept a series of dares for cash prizes. They start out small, like "kiss a stranger," but increasingly throughout the film become more and more dangerous, and Vee's determination to no longer be seen as a pushover nudges her down a bad path. Not to mention she's now paired up with the aforementioned kissed stranger, Ian (Dave Franco), who's also playing Nerve - but who may or may not have ulterior motives. Dun, dun, DUN.
Overall, I thought this was a well-made film that captures our current youth culture pretty well (at least from my limited perspective) and is at the same time a fast-paced, entertaining, tense thrill ride. Nerve could very easily have been terrible due to the nature of the film, with characters intentionally written as making poor decisions, but the natural charm of both Emma Roberts and Dave Franco made the characters still likeable, and you do get a general sense, from a character perspective at least, why they are choosing to risk their lives the way they do. While the final few scenes of the film are completely unrealistic and lost me, the set-up and premise was a great, neon-colored, energetic warning for the people most likely attracted to this film in the first place: don't do stupid things for internet fame.
Rating: B
Café Society
Dir. Woody Allen
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It's another year, another Woody Allen movie. At 80 years old, the guy is still cranking them out, and Café Society, while certainly not one of his best, even of recent years, still shows his signature enigmatic style to a relatively entertaining degree. The film can be filed under his "light comedy" folder; it's more or less your typical old Hollywood satire, not unlike the Coen Brothers film Hail, Caesar! from earlier this year. Jesse Eisenberg plays Bobby Dorfman, a New York Jew looking for work in Tinsletown (there's absolutely no subtlety that this is a stand-in for Woody Allen himself). After landing a job working for his uncle (Steve Carrell), Bobby falls for a charming young lass named Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) - but she happens to be his uncle's mistress! Comedy (and a long-winding path of semi-unrequited romance) ensues.
Although I'm continually creeped out by the fact that Allen keeps putting disproportionately-aged relationships in his films (considering his real life background), I found Café Society to be a pleasant little slice of Woody. Eisenberg does a decent job at capturing the neuroses of a man caught between two "loves," Carrell, like his character in The Way Way Back, plays a hothead really well, and Corey Stoll should have a second career playing gangsters - he's very strong here and funny as the mob-connected brother of Bobby's. I'm still not a fan of Kristen Stewart though, and I doubt I ever will be. She simply does not have the chops to deliver Allen's witty dialogue convincingly; if her character works at all it's in spite of her lacking performance.
Maybe I liked this movie just because of its deep respect and nostalgia for classical Hollywood. The gorgeous deep focus photography from Vittorio Storaro (Oscar-winning cinematographer of Apocalypse Now and The Last Emperor) captures a glamorous Hollywood that probably only ever existed in our imaginations, and I thought it was funny how Carrell constantly name-drops seemingly every movie star and director that worked in the era in a forced-casual manner. The dialogue is quick and smart, even if the story is predictable, and it's overall a very "light" film that's for the most part totally inconsequential, but it's a fun little flick for Allen fans. I hope Woody continues making a movie a year until he drops dead.
Rating: B-
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