Star Trek + Gigantic

Confession: somehow, I was coerced into seeing the new Star Trek movie the night before it opened...and I secretly loved it. Prior to this, I had seen only one full Star Trek episode (and none of the movies) in my life: some newer-generation episode where the Trek-ers discover a planet without gender distinctions that we watched in my Social Psych class. But I figured I'd get a kick out of seeing the fanatics go wild (wrong: no one dressed up, there was no line, the theater was half empty, and there was hardly any clapping) and that the man who brought us Felicity, Mr. JJ Abrams, could not be all bad (right!). Besides, I had not acquiesced to seeing an action movie since Batman - this was my concession for the summer. Here are the things that I loved about Star Trek:

a) 

Spock!!

b) Tough-guy ladies' man Captain Kirk spends the whole movie attempting to seduce Miss Uhura...who all along is in love with the geeky, lurpy, lovable Spock!! Naturally I expected the brawny movie-poster man to take the role of romantic lead, but I was so pleasantly surprised to see that Spock's intellect and rationality and peg-legged trousers had gotten the girl.

c) The rivalry-turned-unstoppable-dynamic-duo plotline really worked for me in the case of Kirk and Spock. Especially because in real life the two look like this - just some geeks at a comic convention!

The whole black hole, time travel, intergalactic militants action plot was fairly irrelevant to my enjoyment of the movie, as was most of the Trek lore riddled throughout. But I can appreciate it (and maybe, as an extension, sci-fi) as a cultural phenomenon and am glad to feel much more informed about the philosophical bent of Starfleet and the origins of the amazingness of Spock.

In movie news more befitting to my taste, I also recently saw Gigantic - officially described as an "offbeat, surreal love story about the anxiety that arises when two people with crazy families collide." I chose this movie for a laid-back Friday night for two reasons: 1) I'm a fan of both its leads, Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel, and 2) I was drawn to this still from the preview: the baby that Paul Dano's character adopts fondling a little stuffed animal alone on the floor.

I thought this movie would be the perfect antidote to a sort of stressful week and a general malaise about one's life prospects, and I was right. You can't really tell if you're supposed to like these characters or not, or if you're supposed to find their actions and their relationship admirable or not (hardly any of it is actually shown, and most of what is is hyperbolically absurd, so you're in no position to really judge). Mark Taylor phrased it really well in his review: "It’s fun to watch two extremely quirky actors play such oddball characters, and to view a film that drops all pretense to realism. These characters with these particular motivations exist only in a certain kind of independent film. They come together, blurt out frank and challenging statements, act and react with the off-kilter spontaneity one — at least this one — rarely finds in real life, no matter how bohemian or alternative...Ultimately, while I didn't buy the characters or the story for one second, there was something beguiling about the film's gentle surrealism." I came away from it not feeling any better or worse about my own situation, but happy that things seemed to somehow work out for these two characters with the ease of a family party, a pinata, and a Chinese baby girl. That's exactly the kind of reassurance I was looking for in this movie.