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]