Star Trek Beyond

Hello dear reader, it’s that time again. Yes, do try and contain your excitement but for the fourth time in under a week, its film review time. Or if you must, blog number 58. But before I get into the meat and bones of why you’re all here, I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone who takes the time to read these ever so slightly comical and dare I say it, informative, bloggy things. I do enjoy writing them and as long as that continues and there isn’t anyone out there of the opinion ‘If it blogs, we can kill it’ I will be more than happy, giving my ever so important assessment of what I go and see on the big screen.  

Now, normally I like to start out one of these reviews with a little background on the franchise, the director or even the actors in it. Sometimes all three, but given that there really isn’t that much I could write, that the awesome public (that’s you) don’t already know. So I’ll just give you a few basics to bring you up to speed and refresh the memories a tad. The Captain of the Enterprise is a lovely young man called James and believe it or not, his dad is Thor. His best friend is alien called Spock, who also works on the Enterprise. He has pointy ears that don’t pick up the Freeview Channels and to the best of my knowledge he’s died at least once. There’s a Medical Officer who once tried to kill Jason Bourne, cosplayed as a very violent judge and has also turned up in Middle Earth ridding a very nice horse. The Chief Engineer pretends to be Scottish and has an assistant that once played ALL the Oompa Loompa’s. We also have a very nice Communications Officer that occasionally likes to wear either green make up and hang around with an angry raccoon or blue make up and with a director that once killed Leonardo Dicaprio with an ice cube. Sulu and Checkov (R.I.P.) sit at the front and do all the driving and pointy weapons stuff and anyone seen wearing a red top will almost certainly end up dying before the end credits roll. Oh and of course, when it comes to the Star prefix, Trek is better than Wars. Lights blue touch paper and retires…

So 2016 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Star Trek and all things that ‘boldly go’, which I always think sounds like having to use the toilets at a music festival. Along with Star Trek Beyond there is also a new series in the works called Star Trek Discovery. This is due to hit the screens on CBS and Netflix in early 2017 and will have a twelve episode story arc that is being overseen by Hannibal’s show runner Bryan Fuller. Not much is known about it at the moment but I wouldn’t mind betting that they’ll be splitting infinitives before you know it and getting into more trouble than a Ferengi in an Acquisitions Anonymous meeting. However, I’m getting off the beaten track here. Star Trek Beyond is why you’re all here so without further ado and further distraction I give you my most humble opinion on what will almost certainly go down in history as the greatest Star Trek film released this year.

It’s Okay. Right, thank you for coming and don’t forget to tip your waiter before you leave… 

There is of course a bit more to it than that and simple describing it as okay is a little bit of an injustice to be honest. This is the third movie in what I’m reliably informed is called the Kelvin Timeline. Now, the first two movies have their detractors, for various reasons. The first film basically reset the clock and with the help of some wibbly wobbly timey wimey bits and bobs, effectively made every single Star Trek series and film, which had come before it, redundant. The second film was on a hiding to nothing when they decided to use Khan as the antagonist. Even with ‘swoony swoon’ Benedict Cumberbatch they were never going to recapture the glory of what is widely regarded as the best film in the entire Star Trek series: The Wrath of Khan. So where does that leave Beyond? Well this time around the director’s chair, that was vacated by J.J. Abrams, has been occupied by Mr Fast & Furious himself, Justin Lin and screenplay duties were handed over to Simon Pegg and Doug Jung. Which is a fairly good base to build upon. Although Mr Pegg’s acting choices recently have been a little bit erratic, he does have form when it comes to screenwriting and you can definitely see the comedic touches spread throughout the film. The action is served well with Lin at the helm and he even manages to crow bar in a motorbike and some stunts for Kirk to show off with. Bad guy duties are provided by Idris Elba, who plays Krall and without giving the too many spoilers away he has a history with Starfleet and feels as if has been abandoned by them. There are other notable mentions that should be given to Sofia Boutella, who plays Jaylah. She also has a history with Krall and it’s safe to say that they won’t be exchanging Christmas cards any time soon. Jaylah is a very strong female character. She isn’t written as a damsel in distress or as a hindrance that needs to be rescued every five minutes. In fact at times it’s the complete opposite and the she has to help those pesky men out of trouble. My only complaints with her character are that she doesn’t seem to have any lines with any other members of the female cast and for some reason, not passing understanding, every time Scotty talks to her; he uses the word ‘lassie’. And when I say every time, I do mean every time. I'm not sure if Simon Pegg was trying to set a world record here, when he was writing the screenplay but it did start to grate on me just ever so slightly a lot. Other shout outs (down with the kids) should go to Zachery Quinto’s Spock and Karl Urban’s Bones. They spend quite a bit of the film together and you can see their chemistry on screen. 

To sum up beyond I’d have to say that the third time was indeed a charm and if I’m being honest I think I enjoyed this more than its previous two films that came before it. It’s certainly a lot funnier and seems to have had more care and attention put into it with regards to the big action set pieces. That said, the final showdown between Kirk & Krall has enough issues with gravity to make Sir Isaac Newton weep. There is a nice nod to the original cast and a special ‘we will miss you’ Leonard Nimoy moment that’s worth mention. If rumours and Comic-Con are to be believed film four has already been given the green light and should be hitting our screens at some point over the summer of 2018. J.J. Abrams, who has had a producer hat on for all three of the new Star Trek Films, has given at least two interviews recently where is has stated that he wants to bring Chris Hemsworth back as Kirk’s father and that he will not be recasting the role of Anton Yelchin’s Chekov. However they deal with his untimely death I do hope that it’s done in a respectful way and it isn’t used as some throw away plot point to help push the story along. Star Trek Beyond continues the franchise with a step in the right direction. With a bit more polish and some tidying around the edges it could have been a contender for five stars. It does come up short in a few areas though. Namely, a bit more about Krall and exactly how he finds himself in the position he’s in far more importantly how he looks the way he currently does, would have been nice. My other main problem with Beyond is that the Star Base ‘York Town’ that plays a pivotal role in the plot it seems to have defences that are about as useful as mud flaps on a tortoise.  

With the original Star Trek films it tended to be the even numbered films that were good and the odd numbered that repeatedly missed the mark. With the new films it seems to be the other way around. So I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the next Star Trek film turns out to be as good as The Voyage Home or as bad as The Final Frontier. Phasers set to wait and see…

Twitter Review: 

Star Trek, Spoilers & Space Opera. Idris does dark & moody and Kirk and co do square jawed heroes.

#ThreeIsTheMagicNumber

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2660888/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvq3y8BhZ2s

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/star-trek-beyond/review/

The Martian

Hello dear reader, it’s time once again to offer up my opinions on my most recent trip to the cinema. The film in question this time is of ‘The Martian’ but before I tell you the story about the film I need to, if you’ll indulge me, tell you the story about the book, which the film is based on… 

Along time ago, in a galaxy far far away lived a man by the name of Andy Weir. This man, as luck would have it, had never been stranded on another planet. Not even Mars but he did think it would be a great idea to write a book about someone who was. At the time Mr Weir had no publishing deal in place and in fact the closest he’d ever come to getting anything he’d written exposed to the big wide world was on a website where he would upload short stories.  There he was, sitting on this idea to write a story. Set in the not too distant future. About a man, who through no fault of his own, gets left behind in a totally hostile and inhospitable environment. The planet equivalent of Basildon, if you will. Mr Weir, by his own admission, had a few things in his favour when he started to create this story. Firstly, he is a huge ‘space nerd’, likes ‘relativistic physics’ and as luck would have it has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of ‘manned spaceflight’. His ultimate goal was twofold. He wanted to compose something that would engage the reader and because he was a ‘space nerd’ he also wanted to make sure the science in his new story was correct. So much so, that he wrote his own computer programs to calculate travel times and make sure he got his flight paths hyper accurate. 

Now, as it turns out Mr Weir decided to serialise this novel online. This did two things; firstly it kept people coming back for more and secondly it meant he didn’t have to be finished before he started to upload it. The initial response for the book was more than Weir could ever have hoped for. He was soon being inundated with requests for the finished book to be made available on Kindle, thus making it easier to read on the move. After doing some quick research he found out that you can ‘self-publish’ pretty much whatever you’d like on Kindle and with weeks of his first request he had it available to download for the cheapest price available, 99 cents. Again, the response was nothing short of stunning and word of mouth soon spread. So much so, that within months of it first going live he had publishers asking if they could release it in paperback. Once it was it was only a short time before it started to garner interest from Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Twentieth Century Fox put up the money, Ridley Scott directed it and the all-star cast spend just over two hours and twenty minutes trying to bring Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’, home. 

The first time I became aware of the book ‘The Martian’ was in the latter half of 2014. I heard it being discussed by Adam Savage (Mythbusters) on his podcast ‘Tested’. Adam said he was blown away by it and also said that he picked the book up to read on a flight and by his own admission ‘not been able to put it down’. He waxed lyrical about it’s tension, how it was a one man battle against the odds and that he ‘could not recommend it enough!’ Then I found out that it had been given the green light to be turned into a movie and that none other than sci-fi legend Ridley Scott was going to be sitting in the director’s chair. This basically turned what had been mild curiosity to read the book into an almost ‘I have to see this film at all costs’ kind of deal. 

Now to the business of the film itself. For those of you who have been living under a Martian rock (see what I did there) for the last twelve months or so, The Martian tells the story of the first manned missions to Mars. The ‘Ares Missions’ of which there will be at least 5, are for scientific research purposes and the betterment of mankind as a whole etc etc. The Martian concentrates on Ares 3. A mission that has six crew members and is designed to spend thirty one days on the surface of Mars. Things go wrong and the  mission has to commit an emergency evacuation from the surface due to a very large storm heading towards their base camp and it’s during this evacuation that Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’ gets hit by an airborne communications dish and thrown away from the remaining crew as they head for the escape rocket. Or if you want it in technical NASA speak ‘MAV: Mars Ascent Vehicle’. Now, before you can say ‘Where’s there’s blame, there’s a claim’ the commander of the mission, Jessica Chastain’s ‘Melissa Lewis’ has to make the call to leave. This is partly down to the fact that they have no idea where Watney has ended up. Because of the storm and that visibility is practically zero and also because his spacesuit has stopped transmitting his bio read out information. Lewis has to assume that Watney is dead and as the wind speed is also causing the MAV to tilt past what is an acceptable angle for take-off she has to put the lives of the rest of her crew first. They successfully take off and then we cut to the morning after the night before, with Watney face down and half covered in dirt and sand. What follows is basically the story of one man’s determination to not to die on a planet that at best could be described as a ‘long walk’ away. 

Using only what he has at his disposal (Amazon apparently don’t deliver there….yet) he has to set about ensuring his survival and growing enough food until he thinks NASA will be able to stage a rescue. This last part is also dependant on him being able to contact NASA in the first place and telling them he isn’t dead. Not the easiest of tasks when you consider that the only communications system able to contact them was on the MAV. They say that in space no one can hear you scream, well, just for those not in the know, shouting doesn’t work either. 

The Martian is a shade over two hours and twenty minutes long but it doesn’t feel like a long film at all. From the moment things start to go south on Mars, it grabs your attention and doesn’t give you much of a chance to relax. As I mentioned earlier there is a pretty good supporting cast here and a lot of them don’t really get a huge amount of screen time. People like Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean were more than happy to play second fiddle to Matt Damon. I can only assume the calibre of actor willing to take these small parts is down to two reasons. Firstly the director involved and secondly the quality of the screenplay. Oh and if you happen to find yourself in a pub quiz in the not too distant future and you’re asked to name a film that Sean Bean doesn’t die in, write down The Martian. He does lose his job but I am happy to report that he makes it all the way through to the final credits. Isn’t killed by an Orc or anything!

So I’ll finish up by giving you a few do’s and don’ts about The Martain. If you get the chance, do read the book first. It’s funnier than the film and contains a lot more of the science ‘why’s and wherefores’ that go into Watney’s decision making process. Don’t be put off by the thought of watching someone effectively talking to themselves for two hours. Do make sure that if you wear glasses or contact lenses, you have them in or on as the film is visually breath-taking and finally, once you’ve seen it, don’t give away the ending, Iron Man wouldn’t want you to… 

Twitter Review:

If you like your 'abandoned in space' films with a little bit of a disco theme, then The Martian is definitely for you.

#BringHimHome

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/?ref_=nv_sr_2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3ioOneTy8

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=139094

Interstellar

So where to start with Interstellar? Well, firstly it needs to be pointed out that when you pays your money and puts your bums down in either the local multiplex or sofa of your choice Interstellar isn't the film that's been advertised. When you sit down and start to watch Mr Nolan's grand old space opera you also get a ghost story with a bit of a time travel shenanigans thrown in for good measure. From the start to the finish of its one hundred and sixty nine minute journey you are taken on a joyride of stunning visuals, complex acting and a screenplay that never lets you get complacent and demands your complete and full attention. This coupled with a few emotional gut punches and the possibility of sometime paradoxes that would even have Dr Who scratching his head, it is safe to say that this is a 'thinking person’s' science fiction film.

Having just finished directing his third Batman film and completing the trilogy in style, Christopher Nolan went looking for his next challenge. He found it in a script that had been floating around Hollywood for over the last ten years. Written by his brother Jonathan and good enough to have Steven Spielberg attached to direct back in 2006, it was a tale of a doomed earth and its quest for humanity to survive. The Nolan brothers then joined forces once Christopher signed on to helm the project and they then went back and tweaked the story and made it more about character and less about special effects.
On the subject of special effects it does also need to be pointed out that Christopher Nolan doesn't like having to use CGI if the shot can be done practically. He is not a fan of having to use green screens. The best example I can give of this is from The Dark Knight. When you see the truck flip over in the middle of downtown Gotham you're actually watching a truck being flipped over. No computer effects. No camera trickery. It’s just a very heavy truck going base over apex and being executed flawlessly. It's also worth pointing out for the record that you are not likely to ever see a Nolan film in 3D. He's not a fan on the genre at all. He'd far rather put his visual 'bang for your buck' into filming with IMAX. So when you watch Interstellar remember that although some of what you see and take in will have to have had some computer wizardry behind it but it won't be anywhere near as much as you think.

So back to the plot. The story of Interstellar is set in the not too distant future. A ‘blight’ has systematically wiped out all but one of the Earths crops, corn, and decimated the world’s population. With no known cure it's only a matter of time before corn fell victim to the same 'blight'.
Humanity has also rejected technology and all the evils that come with it. So much so that the NASA Moon landings from the sixties and seventies are now taught as being fake propaganda. Government money as far as the public are concerned is now spent on the plain and simple things. Making sure that the day to day life of what's left of the population isn't overly complicated and that survival is everyone's top priority.

The hero of our piece is Mathew McConaughay's 'Cooper'. He's an ex NASA pilot, one of those dying breed of men carved out of 'the right stuff' and would happily fly anything he could get his hands on until the wings fell off. Cooper, who has turned his hand to being a farmer since the space program has long since been shut down, lives with his son & daughter, who at the start of the film are played by Mackenize Foy and Timothee Chalamet respectively. Rounding out this family foursome is the father of his now departed wife who just happens to be played by John Lithgow. Just a quick aside here. Interstellar has a lot of what I like to call 'Snuck in a real actor syndrome' when it comes to the smaller parts or S.I.A.R.A.S. for short when it comes to the supporting cast and smaller roles.
Together they survive dirt and dust storms. The trials and tribulations of being potentially one of the last generations to live on earth and the unspoken heartache of the ticking clock of fate.

Now Interstellar is another one of those films it's impossible to talk about without going into spoiler territory. But as a lot of what happens is to do with time travel I thought I'd put the 'spoiler alert' at the end. And if you don't think that makes sense, go see the film!

So once the pleasantries of the first fifteen or so minutes of the film have passed, everyone has been introduced and we find strange things happening in the Cooper household. Coop's daughter Murph is experiencing strange going ones in her bedroom. Loud bangs, books falling of her bookshelves. Murph, who is her father’s daughter, tries to record these strange happening’s and get some concrete evidence of the phenomenon. This is all brought to a head during a particularly nasty dust storm Murph realises she's left her bedroom window open. When Coop and co get up there they find that the dust is falling into patterns on the floor. Cue a bit of deductive logic and Coop realises that these are map coordinates. And as luck would have it they only happen to for a location in the middle of nowhere, a couple of hours drive from their home. So Coop hops into his truck with Murph as a hidden stowaway and before you can say 'oh look we appear to have stumbled across a secret base of some kind' they stumble across a secret base of some kind.
Now from here on in you do need your wits about you to keep up with what's going on. I'll try and keep it relatively simple but basically this is what happens...

It turns out that the government of the good old U S of A have been secretly funding the supposedly defunct NASA so they can go and find other planets for the remainder of the human population to go live on. This 'Plan A' has a backup 'Plan B' which is basically a very select few find a planet to go and live on and then with the help of a few thousand frozen embryos 'make with the babies'. Both plans happen to be possible due to the mysterious discovery of a stable wormhole next to that there Saturn. Now the fact that it's stable and also doesn't move leads NASA to the conclusion that it must have been placed there deliberately by an alien race in order to help us. The whole operation 'bugger off and go and live somewhere else' is being run by Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine (S.I.A.R.A.S.) and assisted by his daughter, known for the most part as Brand, played by Cat Fantine, sorry Ann Hathaway. Between the two of them they tell Coop about their mission to try and colonise other worlds. They brief him about a secret mission launched ten years ago, which took twelve people and sent each of them through the wormhole on what effectively was a recon mission, to search for planets on the other side.
This twelve man team was led by the mysterious Dr. Mann (S.I.A.R.A.S.) who gets described as the best of us.

Everyone still with me? Good, I'll carry on. So they convince Coop to be the pilot of the follow up mission and along with Ann Hathaway's Brand and a couple of other mission specialist who would be wearing red if this was a Star Trek film.
Along with the human crew they are also accompanied by two robots called Case and Tars. These robots without giving too much away are set up as potentially being bad. At times they are almost like mobile versions of HAL from 2001, which isn't the only comparison you can draw from Mr Kubrick's science fiction classic. Case and Tars monolithic in shape, have quiet soothing voices and must do what they are instructed.

Coop goes back home and breaks the news to this family that he's leaving. Despite another coded message from the books in Murph’s bedroom which turns out to say 'Stay'. Now as I said before you do need to concentrate on what happens after Coop and co blast off and a lot of what you see needs to be experienced first-hand and not read about. Coop and his team spend a couple of hours on a planet’s surface and then once they get back to their main ship they have to deal with the fact that over twenty three years will have passed on Earth, Due to there being a black hole on the other side of the wormhole and the wibbly wobbly timey winey issues that come with that. This leads to some very powerful scenes where Coop has to watch twenty three years of video messages from his son and daughter, now played by Casey Affleck and Jessica Chastain (S.I.A.R.A.S.)

In closing I’ll say this. Interstellar is an astonishingly well-made film. I found the science side of the story hard to follow at times and I’m still trying to get my head around the fact that gravity is now the fifth dimension, time being the forth. There are also so parts of the film where I sat there thinking to myself ‘really?’ but the script and set pieces more than make up for the any misgivings I have.  I think that there’s also a possibility that there could be sequels to Interstellar in the not too distant future, or should that be in the not too distant past. But I think that will be dependent on the studio bean counters being happy with their lot and keeping shareholders happy. Oh and if you like the occasional use of church organs in your film scores then Hans Zimmer’s musical arrangement’s my  just be right up your alley!

Spoiler Alert…

Twitter Review:
Interstellar should get a best picture nod but i doubt it will. Visceral & compelling. Hard to watch at times but a must see.
#GhostParadox

Useful links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSWdZVtXT7E
http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=138121