Star Trek Beyond (2016)
DIRECTOR: Justin Lin
CAST: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Sofia Boutella, Idris Elba
REVIEW:
Star Trek: Beyond, the third installment in the “new” Star Trek reboot series, with Justin Lin of the Fast & Furious series taking over from J.J. Abrams (who stepped back to merely producing while busy rebooting another sci-fi franchise with Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens), feels like a super-sized, feature-length episode of the original series (with a budget it could only have dreamed of, of course), but while there are more of Gene Rodenberry’s fingerprints on this one than its two immediate predecessors, the script by Doug Jung and Simon Pegg (the latter of whom, of course, also co-stars as Scotty) fails to go “beyond” as the title aspires toward. Continue reading
The Legend of Tarzan (2016)
DIRECTOR: David Yates
CAST: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent
REVIEW:
Is there still a place for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Victorian-era hero Tarzan in the 21st Century? Director David Yates and screenwriters Adam Cozad and Craig Brewer apparently thought so, but their case isn’t entirely convincing. A good old-fashioned vine-swinging adventure perhaps could have been salvaged out of this material somewhere along the line, but what arrives onscreen is a jumbled, muddled, half-baked mess that, like a depressing number of other entries among this summer’s “entertainment”, offers virtually nothing memorable. The Legend of Tarzan might have brought the 104-year-old character swinging and whooping back into theaters, but is unlikely to launch a new franchise or reignite Tarzan’s name as one to excite modern audiences. Continue reading