Star Trek Beyond

Peachy Elba

Star Trek Beyond
2016 USA Directed by Justin Lin
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight spoilers beyond...

Well the thirteenth cinematic Star Trek movie is finally here and... I still don’t quite understand why the heck it’s called Star Trek Beyond but... oh well... abstract title for a bit of a fuzzy movie. Star Trek Beyond is probably my least favourite of the mini trilogy within a franchise (to date) which began with the 2009 Star Trek (reviewed by me here in one of my earliest NUTS4R2 reviews) and continued with Star Trek Into Darkness (reviewed here). That being said, it’s nowhere near being a bad movie, certainly in terms of the Trek franchise as a whole... it’s much better than Star Trek Nemesis (reviewed by me here) for instance.

Okay... the story isn’t all that great on this one, to be honest. However, you can tell that British comedy guru Simon Pegg, who plays ‘Scottie’ in the new films, has been let loose on the script for this one because the dialogue is pretty sharp. It’s also a movie which is big in action but still lives up, somewhat thinly perhaps, to the basic science fiction storytelling which made the original 1960s series which these current movies are based on so great.

The actors are all fine here with a much bigger role for both Simon Pegg’s Scotty and Anton Yelchin’s take on Pavel Chekov. I’m sure the majority of my readers will know of the tragic accident which claimed the life of Yelchin about a month ago, a big blow to the acting community, I believe. I remember how good he was in the Jim Jarmusch movie Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed by me here) and, just recently, Green Room (reviewed by me here). So it’s actually very sad to see him go. Something which I’m sure won’t get easier for audiences as each of the other four films he still has coming out this year are released.

Ironically, Yelchin’s part is somewhat beefed up in this movie and, although Chekov is still very much assigned to a functional role in this, Yelchin gets his chance to shine as he’s with Chris Pine’s incarnation of James T. Kirk for large chunks of the movie, as the two pair up to try and find their lost crew. I think the dead give away that the writers have been getting more interested in Chekov as the franchise continues is the inclusion of a nice line towards the end which certainly echoes the original character, as played by Walter Koenig in the TV show. “Did you know that Scotch was actually invented by a little old lady in Leningrad?” asks Yelchin, which made me smile and realise they were possibly looking to get much more invested in the character as the franchise continues.

Star Trek Beyond is not just a memorial movie for Yelchin, however, who gets a credit at the end of the movie which simply states... For Anton. Pryor to this on his own memorium credit, and throughout the movie, we are continually reminded of another famous Star Trek actor who passed away recently... Leonard Nimoy, who played the original Mr. Spock and continued to do so in the previous two movies. Nimoy is the one constant that bridges the original franchise and this so called reboot (or sequels as most people know them) as his original character went back in time and bore witness to the creation of this redirected timeline that started off this version of the adventures. With two identical Spocks at different ages living in this timeline, the writers have now chosen to kill off the Nimoy version of the character too... or Spock Prime, as he is now known. It’s a touching moment when the current Spock, played so well by Zachary Quinto but with a slightly diminished role in this adventure, is left his older self’s few artefacts which, presumably, he managed to somehow bring back in time within him. Amongst these is a photograph of Nimoy and the rest of his fellow cast from the original movies, grouped in a publicity shot that I’m guessing was one used for Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country (reviewed by me here). It’s one of a few touching moments and, probably, one of the very last times we’ll see Nimoy’s face in a Star Trek movie.

All the other actors are great too, of course, with Judge Dredd himself, Karl Urban, playing a great version of Doctor McCoy, Zoe Saldana as a much more active Lieutenant Uhura than Nichelle Nichols ever really got the chance to be and John Cho continuing his good work as Sulu. Also joining the cast are Sofia Boutella as new ally Jaylah and the always watchable Idris Elba as the main villain of the piece, Krall.

So solid acting, great dialogue and special effects which are up to the scratch, as usual. However, there’s perhaps way too much action in this one or, at least, way too much motion. I’ve not seen any other movies by director Justin Lin but in this one the camera seems to be swooping all over the place for most of the time. It rarely comes to a stand still, even in the quieter, more low key scenes, and while this technique serves some scenes well, like the first proper ‘swoop through’ of the ‘snowglobe space station’ Yorktown and also in some of the action scenes... the camerawork does get kinda dizzying and disorienting at some points, it has to be said.

Another thing which had me questioning if I had my 3D glasses on correctly was the lighting in some of the scenes... so much so that I had to take them off at one point to prove to myself that, yes, the scenes really were lit that badly. There are certain sequences in the movie, especially in... without giving too much away... Jaylah’s house, that are not exactly dark but... well, just downright dull and which are hard to register on the eyes. Like the interiors in some scenes are all shot through a fine fog which doesn’t quite want to engage you in a way that might help you appreciate the sets. Fair enough, I guess. I’m assuming the director was going for some kind of neutral effect to give other scenes contrast around these, maybe, but it really didn’t do much for me.

The other thing which didn’t quite work for me was most of the last act... the action sequences seem somewhat less than entertaining although, even with all the swooping and whirling camera movement, I was actually able to keep up with the choreography of the kinetic set pieces in this one. So there’s that, I guess.

At the end of the day... Star Trek Beyond is an okay addition to the franchise. Some of the dialogue such as Scotty’s reference to a giant, green hand, which is obviously a humorous reference to the original Star Trek TV episode Who Mourns For Adonis?, had me chuckling a fair bit and you can’t help but buy into the characters when they have lines like this. Alas, it doesn’t make up for a finale which, for me, brought to mind some of the worst Star Trek movie finales such as Star Trek Insurrection (which was an okay film with a terrible last act and which I reviewed here) and the aforementioned Star Trek Nemesis. Truth be told, by the end of the movie, I was getting pretty bored and I think it could have done with either some pruning at the end or, possibly better, a much more interesting couple of set pieces rather than the usual... countdown to stopping the villain realising his plan with just a few seconds to spare kind of scenario. It was already a tired way of doing things back at the dawn of the century... it’s really yawn inducing now. Or, at least, it is the way it’s presented here.

All in all, though, it’s sure to please Star Trek fans who, I’ve no doubt, will turn out for it in force... although I noticed the 3D screening I went to wasn’t even half full on its opening night... which I can’t quite figure out since it easily took number one spot at the box office. So, yeah, not a bad one and I’ll definitely be rewatching on Blu Ray at some point... possibly when it’s been out for a while and goes onto the sale racks. Star Trek Beyond doesn’t really take you anywhere near where the franchise hasn’t boldly gone before but, at least, it doesn’t do that in a competent manner and there are some really witty one liners along the way. Maybe give it a go if there’s nothing else on at the cinema this week.

Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Green Room

Clubbed To Death

Green Room
2016 USA Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
UK cinema release print.

Green Room is one of those movies that both looks, and feels, quite raw. I was expecting nothing less, to be honest, from the director whose last film was the fairly uncompromising but emotionally harrowing Blue Ruin (which I reviewed here). The two films both feel like low budget, independent features... which I guess they are. Green Room, however, also has a couple of well known faces who I was not expecting to turn up in the cast, one of whom, I have to confess, I had to look up after the film had finished playing to realise who I had been watching.

The person I had to look up is Anton Yelchin, who I had already seen do an excellent job in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed here) but who is perhaps better known to many as the new face of Lieutenant Pavel Chekov in the recent Star Trek films. Here he plays one of a group of four 'heavy rock' musicians who are touring around the country as best they can, trying to get paid gigs and going from town to town by siphoning off petrol from parked cars. When their latest gig doesn’t quite go as planned, however, the four are offered another from the cousin of the guy who got them their current date.

They end up in a night club, waiting in the Green Room, a show business term for a room that an act waits in until they go on stage, and they really don’t like the crowd... a large amount of whom are skinheads. However, after riling the audience with a song guaranteed to do just that (rather like the scene in Breaking Glass, where Hazel O’ Connor gets the crowd worked up singing Black Man to a racist audience), they play through their set and make a good job of it. They are just about to be on their way when one of the four realises they left their mobile phone in the ‘green room’ and... this is where their problems begin as they find a group of ‘skins’ standing over a dead girl who has been stabbed in the head, with another girl being held prisoner... a predicament they quickly find themselves in.

The film then becomes about the owner of the club, who is called in to assist when matters get out of hand, finding a way to restage the situation for the police by attempting to kill the group and taking them to another scene where things will look like everything is the dead band’s fault. The band of ‘in way over their heads’ teens obviously have other ideas and when they manage to take an unlikely hostage in the green room in which they’ve locked themselves... and then things start to get even more ugly.

From here on out the film becomes a game of cat and mouse survival as the group, or what remains of them after a short while, attempt to find a way to escape their confines and the gang of thugs, who wear red laces in their shoes to secretly signify they’ve killed people and can be relied on to do the same in a situation such as this. Things get violent and nasty from the outset and, although the majority of the ‘heavies’ in this movie are blunt and unthinking instruments, you do have a couple of standout people in here who match the brutality of their ‘gang’ in both brains and empathy... which is one of the things which makes this movie so frightening, in some respects... the human face of the enemy.

The one of these ‘bad guys’ who has the most empathy in terms of their character, I think, and possibly the ‘weak link’ in the organisation, to some degree, is played by Macon Blair, who played the main protagonist in this director’s previous film, Blue Ruin.

It’s the brains of the organisation, however, who helps keep things really scary... because he’s a pretty well known actor who you really wouldn’t, at this stage of his career as a household name, expect to be turning up as a main character in such a gritty and violent film. His introduction is beautifully done too... if, like me, you weren’t expecting to see him in this. You just see him from behind in his first shot, where you see his balding head which fits right in with the gang of skins he leads... for it is him who we see dishing out the ‘red laces’ at one point in the picture (I don’t want to put any spoilers in this so I won't be saying more about that). It’s only a little while later that we see this main villain of the piece is played by another Star Trek regular, Patrick Stewart. And it’s actually a little genius piece of casting, to be honest. Bearing in mind the edgy feel of the script and the way the camera works to make everything seem more threatening than it normally might, Stewart brings an air of gravitas which matches and probably elevates the sense of impending doom for the rock group who have become embroiled in the murderous actions of this gang. It’s good stuff.

The film is quite gory and violent... one might go as far as to say it’s quite excessive in pushing the grizzly details of the plethora of violent acts on display here... including a penchant for head injuries which really gave me something I wasn’t expecting in the case of one of the actors near the end of the film. However, no matter how violent it gets... and it does get pretty heavy from very early on in the film, including a hand half falling off an arm while people frantically scrabble to keep it stuck on 'in situ' and a person having his torso slit open from the belly with a box cutter... the violence never seems to be less intense or gratuitous than you would expect from this kind of situation populated by these kinds of people. So... excessive but reflective, to a certain extent, I would say.

Luckily, the director manages to inject a certain amount of emotional bonding and poetic handling of most of the scenarios as they present themselves... wit the whole thing making for a very interesting movie and, at the very least, one which will keep the majority of people on the edge of their seat. I was certainly very pleased with it when I came out of the cinema and, although it’s like Blue Ruin for me in that it’s probably not a film I could sit through a second time, it’s certainly another minor classic of modern cinema from the director and people who love film will probably want to get a look at this one while it’s doing the rounds. It won’t be for absolutely everyone... especially those of a nervous disposition... but it’s definitely good cinema and a strong recommendation from me. Catch it while you can.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Drink Tilda Blood Runs Cold

Only Lovers Left Alive
2013 UK/Germany/France/Cyprus/USA
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Up until a few years ago I thought the modern vampire movie was gone as a legitimate form of artistic expression and figured it was going to stay dead for a while. Zombies had taken over and not many people were really doing too much interesting with the genre, or at least that’s what I thought. Now I’ve seen four really great contemporary vampire films in the space of as many years and Only Lovers Left Alive is definitely one of the greats (the other three being Let The Right One In, reviewed here, We Are The Night, reviewed here, and Byzantium, reviewed here).

This time, master movie maker Jim Jarmusch takes his turn to play with vampires. That is to say, he’s using vampires to bring out one of the broader themes of his body of work and using that as a backdrop to, basically, have some fun with the possibilities inherent in the genre. This is not to say it isn’t a strong genre piece, it’s definitely a “Vampire movie” with an upper case V... but the way he uses the genetic make up and popular tropes of this type of experience very much requires a certain level of familiarity from the audience.

And in this artistic choice, of course, Jarmusch is not alone among film-makers.

I’ve noticed that a fair few writers and directors are taking the ingredients of the myth of the vampire, using the bits which they want and throwing the other rules out, making oblique mention of the parts of the myth that they have discarded for each film, assuming the audience already knows what those rules are... and thereby freeing themselves up to get on with “the story”. Which is an excellent way of doing things, no doubt, for an older audience... but young people who are perhaps less equipped to be familiar with the ritualistic elements of the vampire movie/novel may find themselves in danger of being left out of the loop if filmmakers keep using this tactic. Although I’m sure there’s an argument that, by the time one is old enough to see movies like this, the knowledge is already there. Which, I guess, certainly holds up for now with contemporary audiences... but future generations may not be so fortunate with the opportunity, and willingness, to watch the vast back catalogue of vampire films made over the last 100 years or so... but that’s an argument for another time.

Jarmusch starts this film with a startling array of rich imagery, beginning with some titles, in a quite clichéd font to match the legacy of the subject matter, superimposed over a slow circling backdrop of stars. This immediately puts the viewer under a little bit of tension and ready to enter a more hypnagogic realm as the titles have the illusion of veering off on their own if you lose your concentration or glance away from them to another part of the screen. It’s quite hypnotic. The motion is continued post-credits, as the starry background is replaced by a vinyl record rotating on a turntable and we are introduced to the two main vampires of the piece, Adam and Eve, played by Tom Hiddleton and Tilda Swinton respectively, in a series of shots which match the circling camera eye.

The swirling continues as they are intercut in their mutual slumber but, in different rooms and, once they get up and go about their business in two completely different places (Adam is sleeping in Detroit and Eve is sleeping in Tangiers) our perception of what we were just watching is completely overturned and we realise the dazzling camerawork and shifting distance of the main players from the lens is Jarmusch’s way of showing the mental connection between the vampires, even though they are separated by gazillions of miles, physically. Another series of shots of three of the main vampires drinking, which utilises a camera strapped to each actor I suspect, yields a similar sense of psychic camaraderie a little later into the running time of the film.

As Adam goes to get his blood supply from Dr. Watson (played by Jeffrey Wright) and gets some new guitars from his source, Ian (played by Anton Yelchin, the new Chekov in the Star Trek movies), Tilda Swinton’s Eve goes to see her vampire friend Marlow (yes, that Marlow, who wrote Faust and, in this version of celluloid reality, definitely wrote the entire output of William Shakespeare), as played by John Hurt, for her blood supply. The colours are really interesting as Jarmusch uses both fluid camerawork (and the occasional stint of handheld) to focus on what appear, at least to my eye, to be vibrant colours which have deliberately been toned down... so we get a kind of “filtered reality” feeling which is perhaps a visual rumination on the fact that, when you’re lived for as many centuries as the vampires characters in this film have, you get kind of jaded to things after a while.

The characters are set so you have Adam as a suicidal, Byronesque vampire archetype (something commented on quite blatantly by Eve during the course of the movie) who passes his time making great music which is never released and who gets a wooden bullet made so he can kill himself when necessary. And then you have the lightness and calm of the piece, his devoted wife who travels to Detroit to cheer him back up and act as the ying to his yang. The situations allow Jarmusch to comment and reflect upon the ideas made possible by the vampire myth in general, and since there are obviously only a few vampires here and there in this fantasy microcosm, it allows him to indulge on his kind of “last days of dying cultures rubbing together” theme, which he has dwelt on a few times, quite memorably in Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai. As he explores the possibilities of the genre, he gets to also invent some great responses to the nature of conversation between people who have been around this long and lived in this way... which is kinda the point I think.

A nice little idea, for instance, is the fact that the vampires tend to regard the general living human race as zombies and, when we look at our own culture’s current definition of all that means as defined by the slow, shuffling, brain dead legacy of the George A. Romero take on zombies from the 1960s and onwards, and then apply that conclusion to the supercharged senses of the vampires in this movie, that’s a pretty cool analogy to make. Cool being the thing here because, like a lot of Jarmusch movies, Only Lovers Left Alive is nothing if not extremely cool movie making.

It also gets allows Jarmusch an arena to get away with some cracking humour, which I think is where the bizarre accusations of pretension may have come from. The writing, if taken out of context, maybe does seem a little indulgent but, frankly, if you are decoding the scenes and the tone in which they are played, you’ll realise that a lot of the dialogue is high comedy. “You drank Ian!” for example, or my personal favourite moment, where I let out a large, inadvertent chuckle, as John Hurt pointed out that the old “zombie, Shakespeare” was a talentless hack.

However, a fourth vampire enters the picture, in the form of Mia Wasikowska playing Ava, and with her she leaves a wake of disruption which finds our main two protagonists fighting for their lives and, ultimately, reverting back to their behaviour from the 15th Century. Which is kind of an interesting angle for two characters such as these, who are lazing through life at their own pace and reflecting on the almost soporific nature of their existence.

I absolutely can’t reveal to you what happens by the end of the movie, but I will say that the pace is pleasant and leisurely, always fascinating, with stops to take in tranquil moments of beauty whenever those whims of fancy need to be indulged... all set to a fantastically simplistic, yet texturally rich, musical soundtrack which includes Jarmusch’s own band Sqürl in the mix too. And just when you think the pain of the reflection of the future survival of these vampires is about to take itself too seriously, it leads in to a final shot which is an absolutely delightful celebration of the vampire genre and which will, no doubt, please many people... just like it did me.

If you like Jim Jarmusch films in general then you’re not going to want to miss out on this genuine masterpiece. I’d place it up with my personal favourites of his ouevre like the aforementioned Ghost Dog and Down By Law (reviewed here). Similarly, if you like vampire cinema, he’s successfully made a film which both reflects on the genre rulebook while somehow still managing to keep it fresh and as alive as, it turns out, it always was. If you like works of art then, of course, you too will love this movie. If I’d had seen this movie last year, it may well have been my number one film, despite some strong opposition. My worst problem this year, however, is that it’s probably the best film I’ll see all year... and it’s only February.

Don’t miss out on this one, though, whatever you do. It’s one of those films that the cinema of reflection was invented for.