Review - Star Trek Into Darkness

After an auspicious blastoff in 2009, J.J. Abrams keeps the success of his Star Trek reboot burning strong with Star Trek Into Darkness, a slick summer actioner that takes off at warp speed and rarely lets up.

All the cast members from the original are back in fine form (including Abrams' nettlesome blue lens flares): Chris Pine as Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock, Zoe Saldana as Uhura, Simon Pegg as Scotty, Karl Urban as 'Bones' McCoy, John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Chekov, and Bruce Greenwood as Cpt. Pike. All of them excelled in 2009's origin story, but with their characters now firmly established, the writing team of Damon Lindelof, Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman devote more time to developing the spiky but loving Kirk-Spock dynamic that is very much the heart of the franchise. Personifying the conflicting philosophies between logic and instinct, these two foils make this one of the more thematically compelling popcorn flicks you're likely to see this summer, at least whenever it takes the time to stop and breathe.

Review - Prometheus

Off to probe the farthest corner of the galaxy for the origins of humanity flies the spacecraft Prometheus in Ridley Scott's ambitious prequel to the Alien franchise he himself spawned 33 years ago. That original classic is revered for being both a grade-A creature feature and a legit science fiction with strong thematic undertones, but while Prometheus reaches for the same proverbial stars (much like the ancient pictograms that lead our inquisitive scientists on their voyage), its philosophical quandaries and narrative ambiguities are as vexing as they are thought-provoking.

Noomi Rapace (sans dragon tattoo) headlines as Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, who theorizes that the aforementioned pictograms – discovered in the art of different civilizations the world over – are evidence that humans were created by something beyond our world. “Engineers” is the term she and her husband (Logan Marshall-Green) coin for our hypothetical creators, and their thesis is enough to convince optimistically superstitious trillionaire Peter Weyland to finance an interplanetary mission to literally meet our maker. Anyone who's seen even one of the previous Alien films knows that going into space in search of answers is seldom a good idea, and indeed, this entry proceeds to follow many of the same beats as its predecessors. We are introduced to a mostly expendable crew of characters, including one synthetic personality, the robotic David, played with calibrated nuance by Michael Fassbender, the clear standout of the cast. Naturally, there's enough mistrust and hidden agendas to pique our suspicion until the bad stuff starts happening to these curious cats.