...Where Somebody Else Has Gone Before (A Star Trek Into Darkness review)

Poster by Matt Ferguson.

I don't go into films looking for problems. Really, I don't. When you go into a cinema, you're making a pact with whatever's on the silver screen - "I will suspend my disbelief, I will give you the time of day, but only if you give me something truly worthwhile". It's only fair. It's like deliberately looking for the moment when the magician slips something up his sleeve - where's the fun in that? It's better to enjoy the show.

So I went into Star Trek Into Darkness prepared to meet it halfway. I was beyond annoyed by the marketing constantly teasing the identity of Benedict Cumberbatch's villain, even though everyone and their mother and their mother's friend Jean knew who it was. But then I remembered how much I liked the previous film from 2009, which managed to soar despite a shoddy script, purely through the strength of its cast and JJ Abrams being a pretty damn fine action director. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece, I just wanted a fun little popcorn movie.

I got that movie only on the most superficial level. Star Trek Into Darkness is a film that just flat out doesn't work anywhere else.

(WARNING: This review will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film, I'm sorry, but turn back now. There's no way of discussing all the bullshit that happens without doing so; it's vacuum-packed bullshit. They're clever like that.)

Not Every Flowering Dream May Bloom (A Prometheus review)

I imagine by now that all of you interested in Prometheus probably know how it's going to go down, who will die and what the big mystery is because the promotional campaign for this pretty much tells you everything. Say what you will about The Dark Knight Rises' lacklustre marketing; at least the trailers preserved some degree of intrigue.

So don't go into Prometheus expecting to have your lid blown off by some big epoch-shattering reveal that will change how you perceive life as you know it. Also don't go into Prometheus expecting a straight-up prequel to Alien, because while it slides into the overall continuity well enough and shares some similar themes, it's a different beast and makes its own territory, for better or worse. It's in the Alien universe, in the same way that The Avengers is in the same universe as Thor and the Iron Man films, but it shouldn't be compared to Alien. It should be judged on its own terms. How does it hold up?

Well...

Poster by Ibraheem Youssef.