STAR TREK Doesn’t Really Go BEYOND, But It Stays On Course

Now playing at every multiplex in Federation space:

STAR TREK BEYOND (Dir. Justin Lin, 2016)

Does anybody really care about new STAR TREK movies now that J.J. Abrams has so successfully resurrected STAR WARS?

Well, of course they do because there have been Trekkies since way before George Lucas even thought of that galaxy far, far away, the characters are so ingrained into pop culture that they feel like a lot of people’s family members, and, most importantly it’s a highly profitable property for Paramount.

So here’s the third film in the rebooted franchise, the 13th in the STAR TREK film series overall, in which FAST AND THE FURIOUS filmmaker Justin Lin takes the helm, but, with Abrams in the producer’s chair, it still stays true to the Bad Robot brand.

After a funny opening involving Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) trying to re-gift an artifact (that later turns out to be the movie’s McGuffin) to an intimidating yet tiny alien race right out of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we learn that we’re now three years into the Enterprise’s five-year mission and that Kirk, via a classic Captain’s log voice-over, is feeling that things have become too “episodic.”

Pine’s Kirk, along with series regulars Spock (Zachary Quinto), McCoy (Karl Urban), Uhuru (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho), Chekov (Anton Yelchin), and Scotty (Simon Pegg), all seem to be in a recognizable yet entertaining rut as we get to hang with them a little before the inevitable action spectacle begins.

The Enterprise docks at a space station named Yorktown that when McCoy remarks that it looks like a “snowglobe just waiting to break” we know that we will most likely be seeing that happen later on. Before you know it, a spaceship hurls towards the Yorktown and, yep, we again get the premise of a looming alien attack that our trusty crew must try to prevent.

The Enterprise yet again gets destroyed – torn into individual pieces mind you - by a swarm of killer bee-like spaceships, and Kirk and co. get stranded on the treacherous terrain of a planet called Altamid (I think). This is where there’s some nice interactions between the paired up combinations of Kirk and Chekov, Spock and McCoy (who may have the best back and forth as well as the best lines), and Uhuru and Sulu, who's gay now if you haven't heard.

There’s also the intro of Sofia Boutella as Jaylah, a badass white-skinned alien who gets Scotty out of a skirmish and alerts him to the fact that a downed starship hidden via hologram, the U.S.S. Franklin, could help them defeat the baddies.

Idris Elba, as Krall (such an ‘80s sci-fi villain name) is too hidden behind prosthetics to really have the necessary impact, and his back story is a bit too Khan-ish – i.e. fueled with revenge by being wronged by the Federation – but the stakes still feel appropriately high in the second half.

I got a bit lost in the mist of the disorienting CGI-ed chaos of a few sequences but the experience is so much more satisfying than the previous effort, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. With Pegg pulling double duty as Scotty and as screenwriter (with co-writer Doug Jung) you get the sense that this is the first of the recent wave of STAR TREK movies written by people who have more than STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN as their reference point.

The late, great Leonard Nimoy is paid proper tribute to with Quinto’s Spock learning that his older self from the alternate timeline established in the 2008 series restarter, Ambassador Spock, has died, and with a “In Loving Memory of…” credit. It’s also impossible to forget the recent tragic passing of Yelchin, who gets a “For Anton” dedication at the end, especially when Kirk raises a toast to “absent friends” with Chekov standing right behind him.

STAR TREK BEYOND still opts for the amped-up, sexy, and flashy trappings of Abrams’ version of Gene Roddenberry’s creation, though under Lin’s direction there is a lot less lens glare. Pine remarked in an interview earlier this summer that “You can’t make a cerebral ‘Star Trek’ in 2016 - it just wouldn’t work in today’s marketplace,” and, sigh, maybe he’s right. Still, I'd like to see them try.

So the latest entry doesn’t go where any sci-fi movie series hasn’t gone before - even the spoof GALAXY QUEST went to some of the same places as this does – but it’s a fun, fit series entry that most fans will dig. Hmm, maybe this time around the odd numbered STAR TREK movies will be the good ones.

More later...

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at an art house near me:

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE 
(Dir. Jim Jarmusch, 2013)

Finally, a vampire movie for adults! Adults who are into slow moody art films that is.

Jim Jarmusch’s first film since 2009’s critically misunderstood THE LIMITS OF CONTROL sets a hypnotic tone right off the bat with a pitch black sky full of stars that swirl clockwise behind opening red pointy titles that resemble the credits from those Hammer DRACULA productions from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The swirling motif continues as it fades into an overhead shot of a record playing on a turntable, then a mesmerizing close-up of a spaced-out Tilda Swinton (also from overhead) slowly falling backwards as the room spins around her.

This is how Jarmusch, via the sumptuous lens of cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, illustrates the sensation of instant euphoria that comes from drinking blood, sonically enhanced by the Velvet Underground-style droning of Jarmusch’s band SQÜRL.

While Swinton swigs tiny wine glasses of O-negative in Tangiers, her husband of many centuries, a long-haired reclusive rock musician (a deathly downbeat Tom Hiddleston), toils in a dark rundown Detroit apartment.

Hiddleston and Swinton are named Adam and Eve, but despite their advanced age and historical namedropping (“Remember when you gave that string quartet to Schubert?”), we’re not told if this is the original Adam and Eve. We just get that the deathly pale duo have lived through the ages gorging on, and influencing, art, literature (Swinton can’t travel without a suitcase full of vintage books), and science.

Hiddleston casually asks his gofer, an eager rock kid played by Anton Yelchin, to get him a wooden bullet for “an art project.” Sensing her hubby Hiddleston’s suicidal leanings over a video phone chat, Swinton hops a plane to Detroit. There, the long-time lovers luxuriate in each other’s company, slow dancing to Denise LaSalle’s “Trapped by a Thing Called Love” and sharing O-negative popsicles, until a flirty Mia Wasikowska shows up as Swinton’s reckless younger sister who needs a place to stay.

All the while, Hiddleston refers to the mortal humans as “zombies,” and bemoans what society has become. This social commentary doesn’t go very far, but it doesn’t need to as there’s plenty of creepy atmosphere and ominous imagery to sink one’s teeth into.

The spare cast also includes Jeffrey Wright, who previously appeared in Jarmusch’s 2005 Bill Murray vehicle BROKEN FLOWERS, as a doctor who illegally procures Hiddleston with blood, and the 74-year old acting legend John Hurt as Elizabethan-era playwright Christopher Marlowe, Swinton’s blood connection in Tangiers. Hurt has a great deathbed scene in which he speaks of being the true author of Shakespeare’s plays, labeling the bogus Bard an “illiterate zombie philistine.”

Hiddleston displays layers not even hinted at in his popular portrayal of Loki in Marvel’s AVENGERS and THOR movies, while Swinton plays upon her icily alluring persona with a tongue-in-cheek slyness; they’re utterly convincing as this blood-sucking yet exquisitely cultured couple.

It's also a bit amusing that Swinton followed spoofing her resemblance to David Bowie in his video for “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” (from the 2013 album The Next Day) with recalling Bowie's emaciated, pale presence as a dying vampire in THE HUNGER (1983) whether or not that was intended.

Alongside the aforementioned tunage by Jarmusch’s band, Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem’s otherworldly score, which won the Cannes Soundtrack Award last year, adds greatly to the film’s tense trance-like tone. It reverberated in my psyche long after I left the theater.

With its subtle wit and its engagingly erotic ambience, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE is a welcome respite from the bombastic blockbuster fodder currently clogging up the multiplexes. It stands up nicely to Jarmusch’s ‘80s and ‘90s indie classics (STRANGERS IN PARADISE, DOWN BY LAW, MYSTERY TRAIN, DEAD MAN,) and is his best film since 1999’s GHOST DOG.

It’s also the first vampire film in a long time fit for a evening of fine wining and dining - even if blood isn’t your particular poison.

More later...