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Star Trek
Rated R. Directed by J.J. Abrams, Paramount Pictures, Running time: 2 hours 6 min.
In the new Star Trek the young Kirk and Spock start off on the wrong foot. © 2009 Paramount Pictures.Most fan and critical reaction to this latest product of the Star Trek series has been favorable, and with good reason. While honoring the original, director J.J. Abrams and his crew have produced what should be a box-office winner. And it provides plenty of material for church folk, especially youth, to discuss.
The “prequel” opens with a Federation Starfleet ship captained by George Kirk under attack by a huge, strange-shaped vessel captained by Nero, a Romulan renegade bent on avenging his planet’s destruction. Overwhelmed by superior firepower, Kirk orders his crew to abandon ship.
Among the evacuees is his wife, Winona, about to give birth to their first child (don’t ask why she is aboard). To allow the crew time to escape, Kirk stays with his ship and rams the attacker. Up to the point of impact, he stays in radio contact with his wife. During this exchange, a baby boy is born, the new parents express their love, agree on the name James Tiberius Kirk for their son — and say farewell.
Thus is born the great Starfleet hero, half-orphaned, and, as we see subsequently, a hellion of a kid. Raised in Iowa, the teenaged Jim seems like a rougher version of Luke Skywalker. After he gets into a bar brawl, a Starfleet officer who flew with his father tries to convince him to follow in the elder Kirk’s honorable footsteps. Jim initially refuses, but his career choice is a foregone conclusion.
Meanwhile on Vulcan the young Spock is a ridiculed outsider because his ambassador father married an Earth woman. Vulcans might be ultra-rational, but they are also subject to prejudice.
Spock and Kirk begin their relationship at the Starfleet Academy, not as bosom pals, but as enemies after the somewhat older Spock accuses Kirk of cheating on a test. Before long they are both aboard the brand-new Enterprise on their way to intercept the same Romulan vessel that defeated Kirk’s father. This time it’s attacking the planet Vulcan, and Spock, not Jim Kirk, is captain of the Enterprise. Kirk is there because his friend Bones sneaked him onboard.
Also aboard are younger versions of the crew now familiar to millions of fans. The young actors who portray them are well matched to their characters. Viewers witness the first use of the beloved phrase, “Beam me up, Scotty,” wonderful special effects, and, best of all, the start of relationships that have always been at the heart of the saga.
Original cast member Leonard Nimoy makes a special appearance as the older Spock. At the ripe age of 129 Earth years, he returns — logically — from the future.
—Edward McNulty.
A longer review with discussion questions is available on the Visual Parables Web site.
Sunshine Cleaning
Rated R. Directed by Christine Jeffs, Overture Films, 1 hour 31 min.
In Sunshine Cleaning two sisters find that cleaning up crime scenes is profittable, but very messy. © 2009 Overture FilmsThis independent film about two very different sisters reminds some of Little Miss Sunshine, partly due to Alan Arkin again playing a quirky grandfather mentoring, in a dubious fashion, his grandson. I was reminded more of the old tale, “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”
Rose Norkowski (Amy Adams) works hard as a house cleaner, whereas younger sister Norah (Emily Blunt), still lives with their dad, prefers to do drugs and party. When Rose is hired to clean up the bloody mess at a crime scene, she switches fulltime to that type of work because it pays well. Apparently at last upon the road out of poverty, she browbeats her younger sister to become her assistant. Rose especially needs the money because her 7-year-old son has emotional problems and needs to attend a private school for the individual attention it will provide.
Rose also aspires to rejoin her former high school friends, who have reached a higher societal status. As a former prom queen and girlfriend of the football team captain, she was humiliated by encountering a classmate while cleaning the woman’s home.
She accepts a class reunion invitation, but has to send Norah, unsupervised, to cover an emergency job when it conflicts with the reunion. The results are calamitous and the reunion does not turn out as she hoped it would. Rose has been carrying on an affair with a married man (the former football captain), and must decide whether she is to continue the illicit relationship or become her own person, independent emotionally as well as financially.
Sunshine Cleaning is a funny and poignant indie film that you might be able to find only at Netflix when it is released on DVD, but because of its human interest issues, especially of forgiveness and reconciliation, it should be on your “to see” list.
—Edward McNulty.
A longer review with discussion questions is available on the Visual Parables Web site. |
