New at the Movies: Star Trek Into Darkness, Song for Marion, Gambit, Spring Breakers and Maori Boy Genius

The 2009 Star Trek reboot went into pro­duc­tion on the eve of the writ­ers’ strike and there­fore had no right to be as enter­tain­ing — or to make as much sense — as it did. In fact, it was so suc­cess­ful that it has become the gold stan­dard of dor­mant fran­chise resus­ci­ta­tion and I’m hop­ing that the lessons — what to hon­our, what to ignore, the mix of know­ing humour and state-of-the-art action — are tak­en on board by the forth­com­ing Super­man block­buster Man of Steel.

A re-watch of Star Trek on Wednes­day night con­firmed my thoughts from the orig­i­nal review. It worked so well, on so many lev­els, that by the end I was eager­ly antic­i­pat­ing my Fri­day night reunion with Christo­pher Pine’s Kirk, Zachary Quin­to’s Hot Spock, etc. So, it is with a heavy heart then, that I have to report feel­ing let down by Star Trek Into Dark­ness. Every­thing seems a lot more self-con­scious than before, as if the film­mak­ers have just realised that there are a squil­lion peo­ple watch­ing and they’d bet­ter not make a mess of things. Which usu­al­ly means that’s exact­ly what hap­pens.

Not long after the Fed­er­a­tion has been saved in the first film, our heroes are out explor­ing the galaxy, get­ting into trou­ble. As pun­ish­ment for vio­lat­ing the Prime Direc­tive (and incom­plete paper­work), Kirk is reliv­ed of the Enter­prise com­mand but before he has time to prop­er­ly lick his wounds, a ter­ror­ist bombs Starfleet’s Lon­don office and threat­ens to kick off an inter­galac­tic (intra-galac­tic?) war with the Klin­gons.

[pullquote]dying is easy — com­e­dy is hard[/pullquote]It’s the exe­cu­tion that dis­ap­points this time around. The humour feels a bit heavy-hand­ed, the attempts to incor­po­rate beloved ele­ments from the Orig­i­nal Series are clunky and the action is repet­i­tive — there are sev­er­al last sec­ond res­cues, for exam­ple, and at least two of them involve actu­al on-screen count­downs. I can’t say more for fear of spoil­ers but — suf­fice to say — Star Trek Into Dark­ness is only a B minus while its pre­de­ces­sor mer­it­ed an A.

I also don’t get the fuss over Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch, but more about that anoth­er day.

Song for Mar­i­on opens with one of the ten best songs ever writ­ten — Char­lie Rich’s “The Most Beau­ti­ful Girl (In the World)” — so puts mul­ti­ple brown­ie points in the bank before a line is spo­ken. Ter­ence Stamp plays tac­i­turn Arthur, grudg­ing­ly escort­ing his ail­ing wife Mar­i­on (Vanes­sa Red­grave) from their mod­est bun­ga­low to the hall on the local estate so she can sing with her mates while he sul­len­ly smokes out­side.

Mar­i­on’s choir is organ­ised and led by a perky young school­teacher (Gem­ma Arter­ton) and she is deter­mined for them to enter a local com­pe­ti­tion. Arthur is wor­ried that Mar­i­on’s health is not up to the extra work involved and when his fears are realised he with­draws even fur­ther into him­self, to the extent of alien­at­ing his own son (the always wel­come pres­ence of Christo­pher Eccle­ston) and grand­daugh­ter.

But this is a feel-good — uplift­ing — movie, not some­thing by Michael Haneke, so the plea­sures are to be had in the turn­around. Song for Mar­i­on could not exist with­out the bril­liant doc­u­men­tary about a pen­sion­ers’ choir, Young @ Heart , which dis­solved me into a pud­dle on the floor of the Embassy back in 2007. It milks the inevitable humour less suc­cess­ful­ly but hits the sen­ti­men­tal tar­get, helped by Stam­p’s van­i­ty-free per­for­mance and Red­grave’s warmth. View­ers of a sen­si­tive dis­po­si­tion are warned to vacate the cin­e­ma before Celine Dion starts war­bling over the clos­ing cred­its.

Mar­i­on and Arthur may argue oth­er­wise but it’s a uni­ver­sal truth that “dying is easy — com­e­dy is hard”. This is the main les­son that Col­in Firth can take from the caper movie Gam­bit in which he plays a frus­trat­ed art his­to­ri­an try­ing to defraud his boor­ish employ­er by means of a forged Mon­et and a beau­ti­ful Tex­an chick­en pluck­er. It’s very rare to see a film with such promis­ing indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors (a script by the Coen Broth­ers for starters, Alan Rick­man as the media tycoon, Cameron Diaz as a not-so-dumb blonde) fail to click to quite this degree but here we are.

Har­mo­ny Korine’s Spring Break­ers arrives on our shores with quite a rep­u­ta­tion for all sorts of cul­tur­al and social trans­gres­sions, but I found it to be an old-fash­ioned moral­i­ty tale dressed (scant­i­ly) in music video appar­el. It’s the clash between what actu­al­ly hap­pens to the char­ac­ters and how their sto­ry is pre­sent­ed that makes Spring Break­ers both inter­est­ing and at the same time fair­ly repul­sive.

Four teenage girls (Sele­na Gomez, Vanes­sa Hud­gens, Ash­ley Ben­son, Rachel Korine), des­per­ate to join their friends on the Flori­da beach­es for Spring Break, rob a din­er, torch a car and blow the tak­ings on blow before get­ting bust­ed by the local cops. Feel­ing a tiny bit sor­ry for them­selves at this point — but not sor­ry for any­one else — they are bailed out by bejew­elled playa James Fran­co who intro­duces them to a gen­uine­ly crim­i­nal under­world.

It’s one of the inter­est­ing things about cin­e­ma — that the cam­era can make glo­ri­ous the ugly and pro­fane but also turn beau­ty into some­thing foul, some­times just by mak­ing us con­scious of our own gaze. Spring Break­ers spends a great deal of time objec­ti­fy­ing pret­ty drunk­en girls on beach­es, but the nar­ra­tive also pun­ish­es the trans­gres­sors in quite tra­di­tion­al ways. I think what I’m say­ing is this — Spring Break­ers is more inter­est­ing as a cul­tur­al arte­fact than it is as a movie.

The mar­vel­lous doc­u­men­tary Maori Boy Genius was one of my picks of 2012 and I’m pleased to note that it is now get­ting a decent cin­e­ma release so more peo­ple can be exposed to the charm­ing young New Zealan­der Ngaa Rau­uira Pumanawawhiti. Only 16 dur­ing film­ing, Ngaa Rau­uira shows great promise as a schol­ar and a leader and Pietra Bret­tkel­ly’s film fol­lows him as he takes on the immense chal­lenge of study­ing inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. This is only the begin­ning for a fas­ci­nat­ing young man.

[Cross-post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes]