Artery

• Paramount Pictures

The title Star Trek Into Darkness remains just as nebulous by the time the closing credits roll as it does during a chase prologue along the Class M Planet of Nibiru. Fortunately, director J.J. Abrams inadvertently provides a number of alternate titles along the way. Into Darkness is the second installment of Star Trek’s look into yesteryear, the continuation of an alternate timeline created in the 2009 Star Trek, also directed by Abrams, which chronicles the adventures of the fledgling crew of the Starship Enterprise.

Just call it Star Trek Babies II.

In essence, Into Darkness is really about the evolving relationship between Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto), although their bromance usually boils down to scenes like Kirk’s misty separation anxiety at the news that Spock is being reassigned to another ship, or Spock’s jealousy emotion being triggered when Kirk enlists the duplicative services of beautiful blond science officer Carol (Alice Eve). What hampers any emotional heft, however, is the misapprehension that their relationship has always been about the characters, discounting the time-tested rapport developed between William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.

That said, Pine and especially Quinto prove capable as they, along with a more prominently featured Uhura (Zoe Saldana) and the rest of the crew, face a threat from within: Starfleet officer-turned-terrorist John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a highly intelligent super soldier whose covert design goes sideways after he breaks loose from the moorings of his Federation minders.

Just call it Star Trek: The Wrath of Bourne.

Early on, Abrams hints at Star Trek’s political and social heritage with allegory critical of the current war on terror, including policies favoring indiscriminate hits on high-value targets and drone missile attacks. (Poor Klingons, formerly emblematic of the threat and decay of the Soviet Empire, are now stand-ins for modern day terrorists.) But any such high mindedness quickly evaporates in the fog of a script that is equally lighthearted and incomprehensible, along with a hellfire of 3D special effects and Abrams’ trademark visual quirks.

Just call it Star Trek: Into Lens Flares.

Unlike the sublime mix of rediscovery and homage that fueled the 2009 reboot, Into Darkness eventually chokes on the umbilical cord tethered to its heritage. Trouble with a Tribble or one of a dozen “manual auxiliary rerouted power couplings” are cute, but homage soon crosses the line into unoriginality, from the choice of villain to the mashed-up tropes to a scene in the final act featuring such shameless aping that it converts the sacrosanct into self-parody.

Into Darkness is an entertaining retread that also feels like an elongated TV episode with a bigger budget and explosions that come at the expense of the series’ humanism. This next generation Star Trek is reworked and replicated for today’s generation of moviegoers.

Just call it Star Trek: Attack of the Clones.

• Marvel Studios 2013

IRON MAN 3


Opens today

In every conceivable way, Tony Stark’s foe in Iron Man 3 is himself. It starts with an enemy born of Stark’s chronic dickishness, a spurned fan-turned-supervillain not unlike Buddy Pine-cum-Syndrome in The Incredibles. It continues with a superhero whose egotistical compulsion to unmask his true identity continues to put an ever present bullseye on him and his scant loved ones. But Stark’s biggest adversary is his own psyche, an id now fractured by insecurity—indeed, it’s wry genesis that the film is essentially a 130-minute psychiatrist’s couch confession.

Beneath his renowned wisecracks and cocksuredness, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) faces a new reality spawned from the Big Apple battle royale finale to The Avengers. It bears mentioning that Iron Man was the first installment of the now-interwoven Marvel Cinematic Universe. The years since have seen gods and genetic behemoths as heroes, and mutants and aliens from other dimensions as villains.

Against this backdrop, Stark is a self-described “man in a can,” seized by fits of anxiety when a child fan merely asks about “what happened in New York.” (More 9/11 allegory? Never mind, let’s just move on.) While the 42 iterations of armor Stark has fashioned in the basement his cliffside laboratory appear the embodiment of an obsessive mind, they are actually the ongoing realization of Stark’s fateful “I am Iron Man” declaration at the end of the first film. The man and the machine are becoming inseparable, an evolution propelled by equal parts ego and envy.

• Photo by Atsushi Nishijima
• Here he is now, entertain us

The Place Beyond the Pines

Now playing

Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines is a tattered melodrama that reaches fevered pitches out of nowhere and ambles with confidence through its baggy plot. It’s a sweaty ride, shifting in and out of rapid speeds that come in spurts, a lot like Ryan Gosling on his getaway motorbike, zipping through Schenectady, N.Y., against oncoming traffic to suddenly curve off onto a damp side street.

Gosling, as Luke, rocks patterned pants, bleached-blond hair and corny tattoos, synthesizing a goofy demeanor with blunt intensity (his voice cracks when he robs banks) that fits perfectly into Cianfrance’s brand of opera in Dullsville.

As Luke’s partner in crime, Ben Mendelsohn limps through his scenes like an outsider artist with homicidal tendencies. Every time he shows up, the jagged tone crackles anew. If his character ever intersected with Ray Liotta’s electric bad cop, you get the feeling the screen would crack in half.

Cianfrance also does great work with Eva Mendes, but she’s always good, and—feat of feats—makes smug jock Bradley Cooper momentarily sympathetic as a skittish cop.

42

“You’re medicine, Jack!” growls Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in writer-director Brian Helgeland’s 42. He’s talking, of course, to Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), the Negro League player whom he’s hired to play in the big leagues, breaking baseball’s color barrier.

In this version of the story, Rickey never doubted himself, knew exactly how to make it happen and picked a ballplayer tough enough to deal with the nasty stuff he’d have to put up with, but smart enough not to fight back. Thank you, Jackie Robinson, for swinging the bat at the ball and not at anyone’s head.

Helgeland’s movie jumps back and forth from Robinson’s preparation in the minor leagues to the Brooklyn Dodgers preparation for his arrival: “He is coming!” bellows manager Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni), like John the Baptist prophesying about the messiah.

Combined with Rickey’s mentions of God as the ultimate baseball fan, and the way Robinson is picked almost randomly from a stack of files by Rickey and said to be blessed with “superhuman” talent, Robinson is made an incidental part of this scheme. It’s fate. There is no other way this could have happened. Of course, thinking Robinson is superhuman instead of smart and devoted enough to play the game well is its own more nuanced brand of racism. But that’s beyond the grasp of 42.

• Radius/TWC
• Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Julianne Moore can't save "6 Souls"

6 SOULS

Now playing (see times below)

Movies like 6 Souls, which creeps into theaters and VOD sites, remind me how psychological thrillers or supernatural thrillers or thrillers period are always tricky to pull off. These flicks always must walk a tightrope of staying intensely, viscerally plausible without falling off and descending into complete ridiculousness.

For the first hour or so, 6 Souls, which was made three years ago as Shelter and has been retitled upon this domestic re-release, makes audiences believe that it will keep its balance and stay on the rope. Julianne Moore, who seems to star in movies like this every five years, plays a God-fearing, widowed psychiatrist/single mom who debunks the claims of murderers that claim multiple personality disorder. She butts heads on this matter with her less skeptical father (Jeffrey DeMunn), also a shrink. He challenges her to debunk David (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), his wheelchair-bound, backwoods-accented patient who can also turn into Adam, an aggressive guy from the streets who can walk just fine.

Swedish directors Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein (who went on to direct last year’s Underworld: Awakening) create a moody, stylishly minimal atmosphere, complete with suspenseful music cues that verge on self-parody. They also pull off attention-grabbing camera moves (fluid overhead shots, steady long takes) that would make Brian De Palma shed a proud tear.

Everything goes downhill in the second hour. Whereas the first hour had an unrushed leanness to it, as Moore’s doctor slowly-but-surely discovers more about who David/Adam is, the second hour is anxiously crammed with a bunch of stuff. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, more personalities show up to inhabit Rhys-Meyers’ character, which the movie speedily doles out one after the other. Rhys-Meyers seems so game to show off his range, playing different characters in the same body.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers are far too busy throwing in everything, from obvious exposition to a detour into white-trash voodoo land to a showdown complete with a gotcha ending.

6 Souls is an attempt to address the religion-vs.-science debate. With the plot (scripted by Michael Cooney, who’s responsible for the straight-to-cable Jack Frost movies) hammering the message that there are some things out there you can’t explain—not to mention that the movie offs most of the non-believing characters—the film literally appears to be on the side of the angels.

But even though God is actually mentioned in the closing, special-thanks credits, dude couldn’t unfortunately work His/Her magic and prevent this film from being the uneven, preposterously out-of-control wreck that it is.

Can the church say “Amen”?