Star Trek Beyond (2016)

Star Trek Beyond. Yeah. Beyond. Beyond what?

In addition to having the stupidest title for a Star Trek movie since 2002’s Star Trek: Nemesis, Star Trek Beyond (henceforth referred to as Beyond) suffers from the fatal malady of being boring.

There’s not much going on here. Yeah, there’s a few battles in outer space, but haven’t we seen all that before? There’s nothing going on in Beyond that differentiates it from, let’s say, your average generic sci-fi CGI flick.

What really surprises me is how far this new Star Trek movie has fallen. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek (2009) was a refreshing diversion. I’m one of the strongest defenders of Abrams’ follow up, Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), which also has a shitty title but at least had some… entertainment value behind it (Mr. Spock fisticuffs notwithstanding).

I’m not going to waste time by recapping the plot, because: 1) it doesn’t matter, and 2) who cares anyway?

This is the first Trek movie since Nemesis that I couldn’t sit through. That’s right: I actually left the movie theater (walked out) about 1/3 of the way through. I didn’t watch the whole thing (it was a chore) until many months later, when I received a promo code to stream the movie for free.

Blah. The movie is boring, stupid, and nothing of any import happens. Yeah there’s a few touching moments in honor of the late, great Leonard Nimoy, but they feel shoehorned in. A simple “In memory of Leonard Nimoy” at the beginning would’ve sufficed.

I could go on, but I don’t have the time. Beyond is among the worst Trek movies: inconsequential, boring and generic. I’d welcome J.J.’s return to the director’s chair and the return of the writing team from the previous two movies. At least those movies held my attention for two hours.

Check out my ranked list (with commentary) of all 13 Star Trek movies here.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

This review does not spoil elements of the plot.

You know those old movies that Roger Ebert (the late film critic) would famously freeze-frame and analyze in minute detail, scene by scene? Rogue One is that kind of movie: almost every single scene, every cut, pan and swoop of the camera offers a moment that you want to stop and regard, take in and absorb to the extent possible. Here, finally, is a cineaste’s Star Wars.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story might have an unwieldy title, but it accomplishes something that no Star Wars movie since 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back has managed: a sense of wonder, and a feeling of grand, high adventure. Rogue One is, pound for pound, the very best Star Wars movie since Empire, and together with 1977’s A New Hope it represents a knock-’em-dead blowout of soaring outer-space adventure/fantasy and operatic spectacle.

Another accomplishment is a palpable sense of consequence. You could argue that the Star Wars prequels blew this, and Return of the Jedi (1983) and The Force Awakens (2015) come close but no cigar. The story and characters’ actions and motivations in Rogue One have genuine consequence–important things happen that will affect the outcome of Star Wars stories yet to be told.

Rogue One firmly occupies the “used future” ethos of the original Star Wars trilogy. The shiny digital sheen that pervades the prequels is gone, replaced by a world that feels lived in.

Another fascinating element of Rogue One is the idea that it brings us into the world of the Galactic Empire. The movie works almost as an “day in the life of…” documentary, especially in the opening scenes set on the moon of Jedha.

That Rogue One ends in yet another big, epic space battle is to be expected: every Star Wars movie, excepting Empire Strikes Back, ends with a Big Space Battle, but the one in Rogue One is particularly well executed, and man, do those Mon Calamaris make good leaders.

Rogue One settles a question that might have been on the mind of fans of the original Star Wars trilogy: what is it like to be Darth Vader? Yes, he’s evil and all that, but what does a Sith Lord do when his minions are controlling the actual day-in, day-out activities of the Galactic Empire? Rogue One answers these questions and more.

Remember “the Force“? In the original trilogy it was a quasi-religion that functioned to drive the story forward without feeling like a plot device. In the prequels, George Lucas decided, regrettably, to de-mystify the Force by introducing the unfortunate element of “midichlorians”. Rogue One matter-of-factly jettisons any talk of midichlorians and goes back to the basics: the Force is, once again, a quasi-religion, without any stupid technobabble and overt, extraneous, unnecessary explanations.

Director Gareth Edwards delivers a sorely underrated job of taking what could have been a by-the-numbers generic exercise (see Star Trek Beyond) and making it one of the best movies in all of sci-fi geekdom. My hat’s off to Mr. Edwards. Seriously.

The Star Wars movies have that odd (but frustrating) quality of being hit-or-miss. 2015’s Force Awakens irritatingly falls somewhere in the middle of the good versus bad (quality-wise) argument. I can really pay Rogue One no higher a compliment than to say that it has the courage of its convictions and sees them out to the bitter end: it goes there, does what it needs to do, and gets the hell out of the way.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

(…and my thoughts on the Star Wars saga films in general…)

So I’ve now seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens four times. The movie gets a little better each time I watch it. When I first saw it, on opening weekend last December, I kinda-sorta liked it, kinda-sorta didn’t like it: It was well-made, certainly, but too derivative, with its plot copying, beat-for-beat, elements of the original Star Wars trilogy.

Second time around was in a super-crowded movie theater, several weeks after release night, at one of those late-night screenings that bring out the soccer moms (sans kids) who couldn’t make time during the day, and fans dressed in Jedi robes and fake laser swords, picking up the movie for the 11th time. This time I liked Force Awakens more, but not enough to recommend it, generally, to anyone.

Finally, my third time with the movie made me start to appreciate it. It involves leaving your brain at the door. If you ignore the elements that, again, are lifted wholesale from the original trilogy (especially the original 1977 Star Wars movie, A New Hope), and just appreciate Force Awakens on its own merits (which requires one to actively forget that it’s really just a glossy remake of A New Hope), it plays a lot better. It is on that level that I can finally recommend it.

My fourth time watching the movie involved the home-video version (on Blu-ray); this time I could stop and replay certain scenes–and it’s obvious a lot of care was put in to the script to explain why so many battles in the film take place at very low altitude levels, and other things that nagged at me my first three times through it.

All things considered, Force Awakens probably falls in the middle, somewhere, quality-wise, of all seven yet-released Star Wars “episode” movies. I rank A New Hope as the best: it was the first, is still the freshest, and tells a self-contained story. Empire Strikes Back is a very close second; it’s so good that sometimes I think of A New Hope and Empire as one long, great, sprawling, sci-fi/fantasy/space opera epic.

This is where Force Awakens comes in. For my money, FA can duel it out with Revenge of the Sith for third best in the series. Sith is the best of the prequels and it has its moments, especially in the second half of the film when things really get going.

The final three movies in the series (Return of the Jedi, Phantom Menace and the most forgettable, Attack of the Clones) all exist in middling levels of mediocrity: Jedi has some compelling material toward the end when Luke Skywalker duels Darth Vader and contemplates joining the Dark Side. Phantom Menace has Darth Maul, which somehow makes it not as bad of a movie as you remember. Attack of the Clones: does anyone even remember that one?

So here I will end my half-baked semi re-review of Force Awakens. It has improved with time, ranks somewhere in the upper half of the seven yet-released live action Star Wars “episode” films, and plays better each time I see it. Now, if Rian Johnson can cobble together something more creative and original in the forthcoming Episode VIII…

My rating for each movie:

A New Hope: four lightsabers out of four.

Empire Strikes Back: four lightsabers out of four.

Revenge of the Sith: 3.5 lightsabers out of four.

Force Awakens: 3 lightsabers out of four.

Return of the Jedi: 2 lightsabers out of four.

Phantom Menace: 2 lightsabers out of four.

Attack of the Clones: 1.5 lightsabers out of four.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

Here’s the deal: if you liked 2002’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you’ll probably like 2016’s My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. However, if you weren’t in love with the original, you probably won’t find yourself enjoying this sequel.

I hate to admit it, but Wedding 2 just isn’t as good as the first movie. The jokes are stale; the characters haven’t really moved beyond their quasi-sitcom personalities. Everyone looks a little older, but nothing–including the Dancing Zorba neon sign that flashes over the family’s Greek restaurant–has changed.

Wedding 2 makes the surprise decision to focus mainly on the characters of Gus Portokalos (essayed by a droll Michael Constantine) and Paris, the teenage daughter of the last movie’s married couple. In a sincere performance by newcomer Elena Kampouris, Paris is the emotional center of Big Fat Wedding 2. Constantine and Kampouris give, far and away, the best performances in Wedding 2, and also lend to it a great deal of its emotional heft.

But, the movie is talky and stagey, what with the the extended Portokalos family popping up here, there and everywhere. At a volleyball game; at the restaurant; at the NYU college dorm: the “we’re a big Greek family and we do everything and go everywhere together” gag wears thin pretty quickly.

I was surprised to see so many returning cast members from the original movie–even the great-grandmother is the same actor. YiaYia is silent in the original My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but here she gets one line–advising the young Kampouris to leave Chicago (actually, as in the original, Toronto) and go away to college in NYC. It’s one of those emotionally touching scenes, which, along with a sequence set at a high-school prom, are few and far between.

In the best of movie sequels, the characters grow and change and are different than when we first met them. Mostly nothing has changed in the fourteen years between 1 and 2, and that’s to the detriment of these charismatic actors, their characters and ultimately, our enjoyment of the movie.

My rating: 2 out of 4 slices of baklava.