Star Trek Beyond - A Summer Blast

Star Trek Beyond is directed by Justin Lin, the man behind the most recent Fast and Furious films and the best I might add, and it stars all these people. All these people are in the movies you knew that already. Due to a series of catastrophic events to the Enterprise, it crash lands on a planet where all of the Enterprise crew are scattered as they try to survive from the evil wrath of Krall, played by Idris Elba who's after a very specific piece of technology that has been hidden away on the Enterprise for many years. His reasons for wanting this device are unclear, but what is absolutely crystal clear is that he's an evil person who is going to kill everybody and it's not good.

The trailers for this movie were underwhelming to say the least, and I'm a big star trek fan, so that's not good. Anyone who didn't give a shit about Star Trek definitely didn’t give a shit about this movie when they saw the trailers. The poster campaign however was awesome, the posters for this movie were really exciting so I didn't really know what to think.

I'll tell you what: this is proof positive once again that trailers really don't mean shit. Trailers are just a marketing tool to get us into the movie in the end though, what really matters is the film. And this one was damn GOOD, this surprised me, really big surprise. Star Trek beyond is an absolute blast, I was entertained from opening to close. This was a ton of fun in the theatre, a big summer blockbuster with all the things you want to see. Explosions and fun action sequences, good characters with good humour, and a respect for the original. This movie is celebrating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and it does it very well, not only because it's a very entertaining, fast-paced Star Trek adventure but because it does pay respect to the original cast to the original crew.

It does have an affinity for it and you can feel it through almost every scene in this movie, a few in particular that actually made me tear up, and it was a happy cry, it was just like a warm, good feeling that you don't get that often in movies. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are both once again fantastic as Kirk and Spock. I loved seeing these characters on the screen, but what I really liked about Beyond is that the previous two films have really explored Kirk and Spock’s relationship, so this one really gave a lot of time to Spock and Bones played by Karl Urban, because these two characters get separated from everyone else and they have to make their way through this wilderness of this odd planet there on, and they have a lot of dialogue together, and the dialogue for them is really good classic Spock and Bones stuff, and a lot of this is written by Simon Pegg, and his writing partner, and I was genuinely very impressed with their writing because this movie has a great feeling of character. Because the most important things about the Star Trek movies no matter what you want to say, it's the characters.

Star Trek movies stopped being very original a long time ago because there's really only so much you can do with a space ship and a crew and aliens and the galaxy and stuff. What makes these movies special are the characters, what keeps us coming back to these movies are the characters. And this movie is well aware that because there's a ton of character depth woven throughout this movie, it's not just a lot of fun action, it is a damn entertaining movie that knows how to be a summer blockbuster, but also build character and that is great to see.

Idris Elba plays the main bad guy of this movie and of course he’s Idris Elba, so he's pretty badass as this character. The character is not given quite as much depth as you would want for a long portion of the movie, and for the majority of the movie I was like ‘eh he's fine as a character’ Idris Elba was great as his character, he did a lot of really cool stuff with his voice, I don't know how much of that was post sound work. I thought he was great as this menacing person who's after this device and you bought into his character, but there wasn't much going on there, and you were sort of murky on his entire motivation. Until the third act, (no spoilers) but then I was like ‘OH okay there's ok yeah I can get behind that’ so when you're watching this movie during the first two acts, if you're feeling like he's kind of a ‘Eh’ villain, wait, patience is a virtue. But easily my favourite new edition of this movie is the character of Jaylah. This is one badass woman, oh my god she was cool, I loved her character, she looked awesome, the makeup work was fantastic, she was a fun character that had good humour woven throughout her, but she could also kick a lot of ass which is really fun to see but she was never annoying, she never overstayed her welcome, there wasn't anything about her character that bug me she was just awesome.

So do I like this one as much as the other two? No I don't, I think it's my least favourite of this trilogy for a few reasons number. One being that the first act is a bit meandering, it takes a while to get the movie really going at least for me. There are fun things to look at and it's never boring, but it just didn't hook me until the second act. And then the third act got even better, this is that rare movie where each act builds upon the last and for me, got better as it went along that's hard to do. Usually a movie peaks at one point or peaks at the end but isn't that good in the beginning or peaks in the middle or something. This movie has a steady incline of awesomeness. Justin Lin genuinely surprised me, the action is not quite as intense and laser edged in regards to how visceral JJ Abrams directs his films, but the smaller character moments are well realized, the script respects the original characters as well as these new characters and understands the Star Trek mythos, and understands how to make a fun Star Trek movie. This is an extremely good and fun Star Trek film that for me wasn't quite as good as those first two, and does not have as compelling a villain as Benedict Cumberbatch was in Into Darkness, but Star Trek Beyond was a blast it's a very good Summer movie and it's an overall good Star Trek movie.

Grade - A-

Also I just want to say, rest in peace Leonard Nimoy you are a legend, and rest in peace Anton Yelchin, gone way too soon.

Jason Bourne - GODDAMNIT

Jason Bourne is directed by Paul Greengrass and stars Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander and Julia Stiles. In case you didn’t know, I loved all three of the previous Bourne movies. The Bourne trilogy (I'm excluding Bourne Legacy) is one of my favourite trilogies. These are fantastic action movies so naturally, I was pumped out of my mind that Paul Greengrass is returning with Matt Damon once again to tell another chapter in this man's life, and since I don't want to spoil anything because the trailers are very vague, I will just say that Bourne is trying to uncover certain secrets of his past. Certain things that are very personal to him that he now has knowledge of is setting him on a revenge path to try to learn exactly who is responsible for certain things that happened.

So going in this movie I was just ‘Yes just, please be good, please, please be good’ and this movie starts of very strong. There is a fantastic motorcycle chase during a riot, and it is absolutely visceral it is so very exciting. I love this opening, it was very fast paced, it hooks you almost instantly. Some things occur during this chase that also hook you emotionally and you're like ‘Yes this is going to be damn great I am ready let's do this’. We learn more about Alicia Vikander’s character, we learn more about Tommy Lee Jones’ character and then we get into the real story of the film, the meat of this movie. There's this subplot involving someone who is launching this new form of social media that has people concerned about privacy and a lot of the film is dedicated to this, and about halfway through this movie, I said in my head ‘This is the worst of the Matt Damon ones isn't it? -.-

yep it is

This is by no means a bad movie, it is light years beyond the Bourne Legacy, it is better directed, there are better action sequences, it's better acted, it has a better story, it’s just easily the worst of the Matt Damon Bourne’s and one of the biggest reasons is because this story is not very compelling, and I love the Bourne films for their action, and this movie absolutely has fantastic action sequences, that opening motorcycle chase is awesome, there's an amazing car chase, there's a fantastic fight scene, the action in this movie is not what disappointed me. What disappointed me is this story is just not that riveting, there's definitely a revenge aspect to this movie, not just from the heroes perspective but also from the villain which was very unexpected and that added something to the movie, but the entire story surrounding this social media guru who is about to launch this platform that has people concerned about invasion of privacy grinds this film to a halt every time it is brought up, and it's brought up a lot and I gotta say usually when I tell you guys that a movie is good I'm happy about that, I'm very excited about the fact that I just saw a good movie but this movie should have been much better than good, this should have been spectacular, and the action sequences are, they really are. This is a very competent awesome and fun action movie with a great performance from Matt Damon, a great performance from Tommy Lee Jones and maybe the best performance in the whole movie from Alicia Vikander.

This movie is filled with great performances, strong direction and technically proficient action scenes. But I got to say, the dialogue just wasn't that compelling, as a huge fan of the Bourne movies, I am disappointed, this movie should have been a viscerally entertaining experience that wasn't just a great action movie, but also a very good story, and what they try to do, there are morsels of ‘yes go in that direction now, forget about the damn social media shit, go in the direction you're going at, yes stay in this path yes, oh we're back to speeches about the social media platform why? Why was that such a focus in this movie?’ It grinded the story to a halt, this movie should have been a straight-up revenge movie and when it was, it was compelling when it wasn't, it was boring.

I really enjoyed the Jason Bourne film overall from an action standpoint, from a performance standpoint but in comparison to Identity, Supremacy and especially Ultimatum, this is a disappointment. It still is good though, this isn't a bad movie, and it’s not like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull disappointing, like that movie is actually kind of bad. This movie is at least good, it has fantastic scenes and great performances and very strong direction. But the story just wasn't as compelling or as riveting as it should have been and I left disappointed.

In all honesty, it is a good movie, a movie that I will buy on blu-ray a movie that I can actually tell you to go see but, like I said this should have been much better, considering the talent and the films that came before it. I am hoping that they make another one and that they lock down the story and just make it be about this character, who gives a shit about his social media thing what the hell was that?

Grade - B

B for Bourne I guess?