Star Trek Beyond

After director J.J. Abrams stepped aside to let “Fast & Furious” helmer Justin Lin take his place, many hardcore Trekkies who'er already critical of this rebooted franchise became worried that Lin's third installment would drive the series further away from Gene Roddenberry’s more intellectual vision. While “Star Trek Beyond” doesn’t slow down the momentum or the pacing of this high-octane update, old-school Trek fans may be charmed by the  film's return to a warm and familiar sense of adventurous pulp and sci-fi optimism. Unlike the 2009 reboot, which had to reestablish everything with a new cast and a new style, and unlike its 2013 sequel "Star Trek Into Darkness," which reworked the story beats of the most beloved installment of the original Star Trek films, this outing is much smaller in scope and more contained as a story.

James Kirk (Chris Pine) is feeling melancholy about his place as the ship’s Captain, upon realizing that he has just surpassed the age that his father was when he died. Spock (Zachary Quinto) too is wondering how his place in this unified multi-cultural mission when he learns that the elder version of himself from another dimension (Leonard Nimoy) has passed away. With these character dilemmas in the background, the enterprise is called upon to investigate a deep-space distress call, where they are ambushed by a swarm of small enemy attack ships, crash-landing on a foreign planet. The group  becomes separated into pairs of survivors and have to regroup to find a means for escape as well as a way to stop their new enemy from unleashing a space virus on a nearby society of peaceful workers.

The plot dynamics of this particular adventure are somewhat generic and well worn, but that allows for more impact when it comes to the character dynamics and the focus of the films action sequences. The movie quickly gets us into the head space of this group and grounds the plot in the emotional hurdles of each member. The chemistry between Pine, Quinto and Karl Urban's Doctor McCoy informs the spectacle in a way that few summer tent poles remember to do.  Jon Cho as Sulu, Simon Peg as Scotty, and the recently deceased Anton Yelchin as Chekov are also given key sequences to shine. Zoe Saldana’s Uhura is sidelined the most within the original group as Sophia Boutella becomes the key female cast member playing the stranded warrior Jaylah, who allies herself with the Enterprise to rescue the 'red-shirts' from the evil Krall (Idris Elba).

Speaking of Krall, luckily the bright eyed adventure of the movie and creative set pieces more than make up for the lack of an interesting villain—Elba is unfortunately buried under too much make-up and plot to really resonate beyond his narrative function.

Simon Pegg and Doug Jung’s screenplay almost celebrates the filler spot many mid-franchise sequels eventually occupy, but it’s this multi-million-dollar smallness that rescues the picture from being too encumbered by plot and fan-service. There isn’t anything especially remarkable to say about “Star Trek Beyond” other than it knows how to balance tone, story, action and characters in way that keeps the audience from thinking too much about its construction as a piece of consumable popcorn product.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/July-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Star Trek Beyond."

Jungle Book review

Disney’s reboot/remake of their 1967 classic animated film “The Jungle Book” is a rare achievement, in that it pays lip-service to the most iconic beats of the original feature, while still finding a way of presenting the material without becoming all-together tired and superfluous. Jon Favreau, the character actor turned director of such blockbusters as Marvel’s “Iron Man” and the Christmas comedy “Elf,” has taken on the task of putting this digital IKEA piece together, working within an almost entirely animated environment and using hardly any live-action sets or actors.  This working method of course demands a lot of trust with his crew and the post-production effects team to ensure that his vision, whatever it may be, is represented accurately, and with a multi-million-dollar budget and a small army collaborating to make it work, any number of things can snag on the process. Luckily, things seem to have gone well enough here to bring what is essentially a safe and non-offensive retelling of a slightly better movie.

Neel Sethi gives the only live performance as Mowgli, an orphaned human child who was saved at birth by a black panther named Bagheera (Ben Kingsley). The cat then leaves the boy with a pack of wolves to raise as one of their own cubs, which upsets a tyrannical Tiger names Shere Kahn (Idris Elba) who fears the child might serve as a danger to the Jungle and its current political landscape. It becomes apparent that Mowgli is drawing too much unwanted attention to the pack from Kahn and he offers to leave the forest to be with his own kind in a nearby village. On the way, he is separated from his panther chaperone and falls into the easy life with a lazy bear named Baloo (Bill Murray), nearly escapes a slithering soothsayer named Kaa (Scarlett Johansson) and is trapped by a massive orangutan mobster named King Loui (Christopher Walken).  

There aren’t enough risks taken with this project to be proud of its sustainability as a story, but there’s just enough love and passion put into the production effort to accept its purely corporate purpose for existing. The animal animation is convincing and the CGI jungle environments are beautifully rendered. The team involved did a wonderful job creating a digitally sculpted world that has weight and tactility and Sethi is able to interact with it seamlessly. The celebrity voice cast is given updated dialogue to work with and they all fit their parts well. Murray’s Baloo is warm and inviting and Elba’s Kahn is genuinely intimidating—in an age appropriate, Disney sort of way.

The plot is familiar but it’s comfortable in its own skin and moves naturally. Though largely inspired by the 60s animated feature, the few divergences it takes seem to be cued directly from Disney’s other jungle adventure, The Lion King, and the two stories share enough structural similarities to mix without complications. Sometimes the movie is confused as to whether or not it should include the iconic musical sequences of its predecessor, and most of the it doesn’t, which only makes it all the more awkward when a song or two is attempted without the musical foundation to lay them on. Outside of that hang-up “The Jungle Book” plays like a good time a community theater production of your favorite play – it’s doesn’t have the zest or originality of its reference point, but it’s an acceptable and faithful recreation.

Grade - B- 

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Jungle Book."

Beasts of No Nation review

Netflix has forever changed the traditional models of content delivery. Video stores were put on the endangered species list when people began subscribing to the company’s mail-based DVD rental system, and were later forced into extinction by its ever-expanding streaming service. Entire seasons of television shows, old and new, could be accessed with a single click and movies that people may have never considered watching were put on the same digital shelf as familiar classics. It wouldn’t be long before Netflix would start creating its own content, first in the form of serialized dramas like “House of Cards” and “Orange is the New Black,” and now in the form of stand-alone movies.

Netflix’s first original film “Beasts of No Nation” is an attempt to draw in a new audience that may not already be sold on the service’s versatility. In order to be eligible for awards consideration, this movie was given a day-and-date release, where it was available to stream from home alongside a limited theatrical run. This African war-thriller was written, directed and shot by Cary Fukunaga, director of the first season of HBO’s popular crime series “True Detective,” and the seductive style and the rich atmosphere that drew people into that show is certainly evident in this project as well.

The story here follows the life of a young villager named Agu (Abraham Attah) who is left an orphan when his family is gunned down in the streets by an invading government army. Agu manages to survive the vicious attack when he escapes into the bush. After a few days of struggling on his own, he is ambushed by a group of militant rebels who promise to give him food, water and safety if he joins their cause. Even more enticing, the young survivor is given a chance to avenge his family’s murder with the opportunity to train as a child soldier.

The group’s charismatic Commandant is played by English actor Idris Elba, who portrays the ragtag war-lord with a weighty sense of pathos and psychosis that makes it uncomfortably difficult to label him a monster, even as he indoctrinates eleven year olds into slaying grown men with machetes and keeps them enslaved to his agenda through heroin addiction. Elba plays this tyrannical Pied Piper with a world of pain behind his tired eyes and an unrelenting cycle of aggression expressed through the delivery of his radical speeches.

Attah is also given a strong arc as an actor, mentally aged far beyond his years as he is forced to endure and internalize the worst of human instincts. His character quickly loses his innocence while marching through the jungle with the other brainwashed lost boys and slowly loses his humanity as they pass from one massacre to another.

Fukunaga evokes Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” by giving us the same long, dead stare into the abyss, and in many ways “Beasts of No Nation” is a similar triumph of stylish and emotional filmmaking. It’s very well acted, it’s directed with confidence and conviction and the oppressive tone of the film lingers hours after the credits roll. Much of it is very well made and the power of individual scenes are undeniable, but the movie ultimately seems more concerned with mood than it does theme—of course the very same could be said of “Apocalypse Now."

Not unlike a perverse take on “Oliver Twist,” the fable-like nature of the film’s structure gives the movie something stylistically tangible to hold on to as it throws its audience into psychologically difficult terrain. Though sometimes this technique registers as pat or sensational when juxtaposed with the movie’s all-too-serious subject matter.

In the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks a film like this, although documenting a very different culture, helps viewers understand the process of radicalization by humanizing those we may so easily label monsters and villains. The difficult truth is that in unstable governments it is often previous victims who become the most dangerous victimizers.

Grade: B+

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Nov-2015