There was no Captain's Blog in 2009 when JJ Abrams infamously made the most popular, most successful, most star-studded and action packed Star Trek to hit the silver screen since... well, Star Wars. So popular in fact that my girlfriend even loved it and when it came out on DVD, after watching it that second time she insisted on watching it again the next day, with her roommates (all girls)! And they loved it! How was this possible? How did Abrams take the eleventh film in a forty-year-old franchise of dwindling movie returns and canceled TV shows that hadn't aired in years and make such a blockbuster runaway hit? And made our girlfriends finally like it?! It all goes back to the Universal Emotion. 

Black Panther is a wild and energetic African-inspired fantasy film with a hot cast of tomorrow's biggest stars and a social message that'll give you plenty to chew on for days after. I liked it, and it looks like so did everyone else. It's one of Marvel's most successful movies and it isn't even done running in theaters yet. But... In spite of all this, could it somehow be the worst superhero film ever made?

LAPD buddy-cop meets Urban Fantasy in this District-9 style supernatural thriller that’s way better than it sounds. Unless it sounds cool, to you, in which case, you better check it out. Urban Fantasy (think Lord of the Rings but in contemporary settings) is still kinda making it’s way to the mainstream and I think a few critics out there just aren’t quite getting it yet. But for those in the know, or just not so genre-judgmental, Bright has all the makings of a sleeper hit. It’s got grit, banter, suspense and action layered beneath a compellingly creative social metaphor. But really it’s just a fun, incredibly well-executed Will Smith police procedural. With magic. 

What else could I possibly still have to say about The Last Jedi? 
Baby, I'm just getting started!

Worst Star Wars movie ever! Well... On the other hand, it could be brilliant. So there's that. Why everyone is wrong to hate The Last Jedi and why it's still just, "Meh." (...but I could be wrong.)

You may have heard Blade Runner 2049 is not a big hit. Like its predecessor from 1982, it's long, slowly paced, thematically inconclusive and very few people are seeing it in theaters.`` I don't think mainstream audiences quite know what to do with a film like this in a world of spoon-fed Marvel Cinematic Universes and annual Star Wars movies. But like the pending robot uprising teased near the end, this film no longer cares what the humans think. It exists to it's own purpose. And audience or not, it's an incredible achievement I have no doubt it will reach the same cult status and sub-cultural respect of its forebear. Eventually.

Star Trek Beyond came out almost a year ago and I liked it quite well. It was no Undiscovered Country or Wrath of Khan, but it was fun and enjoyable and sometimes that's all you can hope for with Star Trek. I never wrote a review because, quite frankly, there wasn't all that much to say. Fast and Furious director Justin Lin did a fine job remaining faithful to both the aesthetic established by JJ Abrams when he rebooted it a few years ago, as well as the characters themselves. But a few cleverly framed visual sequences aside, he didn't exactly push the story in any new directions or expand the mythology much. 

I finally got around to watching it again and this time I think I can put my finger on why this passable installment that had quite favorable reviews (in a summer movie schedule otherwise rife with disappointing duds) still somehow managed to be... only okay? 

It let spectacle and plot overwhelm the themes and characters. And this can kill your story too and leave it merely okay when it otherwise had the potential to be resonant. 

I swear when this all started, I was only doing research for my next Lorna Lockheed story.


​I had this epiphany that I could use The Fast and the Furious as a structural template for Lorna's next adventure in much the same way Director Sam Mendes admitted to using Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight as a visual, thematic and structural template for his popular James Bond film Skyfall (Or to use a more relevant example, how The Fast and the Furious itself was modeled after Point Break). Movies and stories are doing this sort of thing all the time, borrowing the bones of some well established or literary benchmark and growing new muscle and skin over the top to breathe life and depth into their work. I wanted my story to be about family, to pit rival gangs against each other and the police, to feature visceral, high-octane racing scenes, and indulge in a little exuberant attitude along the way (as Lorna is wont to do). What better film to homage than The Fast and the Furious, which, for all its flaws and cheap thrills, nonetheless hangs on a straight forward and functional plot progression I could very much take advantage of. The film is pretty dated, I'll admit, but there is something compelling beneath all the gratuitous bikini B-roll and thug culture that surprised me this time.

It's nothing so flashy as complex characterization or culturally critical commentary or even ambitious artistic aspiration. It's just good old fashioned serialized soap-opera continuity porn.

Wait, what? What does that even mean?

Let's take a closer look.

It's finally here! The first trailer for Star Wars, Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. I'm surprised it took so long, considering The Force Awakens trailer dropped more than a year prior to release. Rogue One was similarly quick to simultaneously take advantage of the new fans after TFA as well as offer hope to any critics. But in the case of Episode VIII, there's only about 7-8 months left before the film comes out and this is the first teaser of any kind we've been given besides its name. Disney must not want to burn out the hype too soon, considering this is the third film in three years and there are three more to go in the next three years too! 

But is it any good? Do we learn any secrets? Does it rekindle the hype machine that fuels so many ticket sales? Let's take a look...