POP CULTURE FILM REVIEWS BY AMY DIAZ
Star Trek Beyond (PG-13)
In the middle of a five-year mission, Capt. James T. Kirk isn’t so sure he enjoys the final frontier in Star Trek Beyond, a really solid episode of, like, the most expensive TV show ever.
You know how the BBC’s Sherlock does something like three episodes every two years except this year, when they did one? This rebooted Star Trek franchise is starting to feel like that. Which I mean in a good way! Kirk (Chris Pine) is still out there, boldly going, on board the Enterprise with his core crew — Spock (Zachary Quinto), Bones (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin, RIP) — and the usual bunch of redshirts. But for Kirk, space has started to feel a little less exciting and an upcoming birthday that makes him one year older than his father when he died has Kirk reevaluating his life. He’s considering leaving the ship for a position at a United Federation of Planets outpost. Spock is also wrestling with big-picture questions. As one of the few Vulcans (or, in his case, half-Vulcans) left in the universe, Spock wonders if he has some sort of obligation to put more of his efforts toward protecting and preserving his culture. To that end, he has broken up with Uhura, thinking, as Bones later puts it, perhaps he should choose someone with whom he can make little Vulcans. And he is considering taking up Ambassador Spock’s work on New Vulcan, a mission that becomes more important when he learns of his older, alternate-timeline’s self’s death (the late Leonard Nimoy is seen in a photo). It is in this state of flux for Kirk and Spock that the Enterprise docks at Yorktown, a newly created Federation outpost. Here the crew disembarks for a bit of R and R
AT THE MULTIPLEX * Indicates movies worth seeing.
Star Trek Beyond
— and we get to see the think-piece-spawning shots of Sulu greeting his husband and daughter. (Side note: For a franchise that’s never been too interested in the domestic lives of future humans and other Federation citizens, the scenes of Sulu and his family were really nice. They, along with scenes of young crew members hooking up and breaking up, add an element of humanity that Star Trek could use more of.) The crew doesn’t get much rest, however, before an unknown ship shows up with only one occupant. She tells Starfleet that her ship was attacked and her crew taken near a planet on the other side of a rockfilled nebula. Naturally, the Enterprise is the only ship that is capable of making the trip and attempting a rescue. Pretty quickly, the rescue goes all wrong and the crew ends up separated on an alien planet where they must work to save each other and, as events unfold, perhaps Federation lives elsewhere from a villain named Krall (Idris Elba, who basically plays him as “Shere Khan ... in spaaaaace”). The
on the drug cartels by going after their money launderers in this based-on-a-true story draComing soon ma. Cranston does a solid job Opens July 29: Jason Bourne as a man who not only infil(PG-13) Paul Greengrass trates increasingly powerful returns to direct Matt Damon and dangerous levels of orgain more running, jumping and nized crime but also finds his kicking; Bad Moms (R) Kris- undercover assignment bleedten Bell, Kathryn Hahn and ing into his personality. B Mila Kunis are sick of being “perfect” moms and decide to The BFG (PG) be bad. Mark Rylance, Ruby Barnhill. In theaters now: The Roald Dahl book gets its The Infiltrator (R) movie adaptation with none Bryan Cranston, John other than Steven Spielberg Leguizamo. in the director’s chair. This A customs agent helps take story about a little girl who HIPPO | JULY 28 - AUGUST 3, 2016 | PAGE 54
befriends a kind giant and must save Britain from not-sokind giants would be merely OK were it not for the standout performance of Mark Rylance, who convey’s half this movie’s emotion through eye crinkles alone. B-
team-ups leave Spock and Bones together, Sulu and Uhura are with the bulk of the (surviving) crew, Kirk finds Chekov and Scotty makes a new friend in Jaylah (Sofia Boutella), another strandee on the planet who has eked out an existence in part due to a find that provides her not only with a good hide-out but also some lovely “classical” music in the form of Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys. Early in the movie, Kirk complains that he has started to find all this intergalactic peace-making on a ship where one day runs into the next episodic. To which I say, yes, this movie feels very episodic. But, yay! to that. The continuing adventures of the Enterprise crew are what I signed up for and if what you love about the Star Trek universe is space adventure with an occasional thinky bit, Beyond has that. “We change, we have to. Or we spend the rest of our lives fighting the same battles.” Kirk says this to Krall and I think it sums up the movie’s thinky bits. As Spock and Kirk consider what direction to take their lives,
him find a traitor. As actioncomedies go, this is a fun, if lightweight, entry. B The Conjuring 2 (R) Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson. Though at nearly two hours and 15 minutes it could be shorter, The Conjuring 2 gives us more of the really nice married couple relationship between Ed and Lorraine Warren and their fight against supernatural whosiwhatsits. B
Central Intelligence (PG-13) Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson. The chemistry between Hart and Johnson is the key to the, on balance, success of this movie about a CIA agent and the high school buddy Finding Dory (PG) he unwittingly gets to help Voices of Ellen DeGeneres,
they are wrestling with change — changes to what they do, changes to their thinking about why they do it. On a meta level, the franchise is also undergoing change — the losses of Yelchin (though this happened after the movie was made) and of Nimoy, who is not only a beloved member of the original crew but also a bridge between those movies and this reboot series. And, if you really want to go deep, that statement, especially when you consider the context of when it’s spoken, is actually an interesting bit of commentary on the current political situation, that an old way of thinking doesn’t work in a newer, more complex society. Or maybe it isn’t a commentary on anything and if you see a movie during a two-week political convention bingefest you just see political commentary everywhere, like the seeming omnipresence of donuts when you’re on a diet. So you get your storytelling depth, or at least enough of it to give some emotional heft to really cool space battles. And this movie has one really grand, amusingly scored climactic space battle that I’d love to watch again just on its own. It also has a really terrifying, actually rather heartstringtugging space battle and then, in between the two, several action sequences that are just fun. Star Trek Beyond isn’t the blow-yoursocks-off awesomeness of the first movie in this reboot series but it is extremely skilled at how it uses its characters, crafts a solid story with well-choreographed stretches of action (plus a dash of humor) and uses all of our favorite characters enough so that nobody really feels forgotten. B+ Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi action and violence. Directed by Justin Lin with a screenplay by Simon Pegg & Doug Jung, Star Trek Beyond is two hours long and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Ed O’Neill. Not as deep or as dark as the original, this sequel is nonetheless light, sweet fun with standout vocal work from DeGeneres in the lead.B+ *Ghostbusters (PG-13) Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig. Also starring Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, this remake of the 1980s classic is totally fun. Even if it doesn’t quite reach the heights of previous Paul Feig-directed outings such as Bridesmaids or The Heat nonetheless has a joyful
“let’s play Ghostbusters” feel. B+ Independence Day: Resurgence (PG-13) Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum. But not Will Smith who, as it unsurprisingly turns out, was perhaps the special sauce that make the original movie work as a bit of big, loud popcorn movie fun. This movie revisits the alien-invaded world 20 years later, just as the earth faces a new peril. Too many characters, old and new, crowd the screen in a story that has twice the explosions but not of the energy. D