Eleanor Ringel Cater

The most revered of all the “Star Trek” movies, “Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan,” hangs over “Star Trek Into Darkness” like a shroud.

Much of this, of course, is intentional. J.J. Abrams, whose successful reboot of the redoubtable sci-fi franchise was one of the more unexpected pleasures of 2009, stitches “Khan’’ pre-story into both the plot and the atmosphere of “Into Darkness.”

It’s not a bad idea for a second “Star Trek” movie; after all, those of us who date back to the original TV series have always recognized that “Khan,” aka, “No. 2” as the picture that truly proved the old gang were big-screen-ready.

By invoking “Khan,” with its memorable turn by Ricardo Montalban as a madman of Shakespearian proportions, “Into Darkness” means well. But it’s both muddled and over-thought-out. Everything means everything (except when it means nothing).
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You could say Hushpuppy meets Huck Finn in ‘Mud,” a remarkably fine film written and directed by Jeff Nichols.

Set a little ways up-water from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” in a soggy Arkansas tributary, “Mud” mixes the hard-scrabble reality of the Piggly Wiggly South with what’s left (barely) of the semi-mythic legacy of, say, Mark Twain.

The title character is a charming drifter played with exquisite rattlesnake charm by Matthew McConaughey. Mud isn’t a bad guy, but he’s capable of bad things — especially when he’s caught up in his blinkered romantic pursuit of a redneck temptress named Juniper (Reese Witherspoon, perfect as a sleazy angel in cut-offs).

Mud will — and has — do anything for her. Including murder.
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If “Disconnect” had a subtitle, it would be “The Techno-Phobe’s Nightmare.”

Here is every sin of the Internet any of us Old Schoolers or merely tech-impaired ever dreamed of.

Identity theft? Check.

The perils of computer porn? Check.

The Catfish effect whereby someone poses as someone else? Check.

“Disconnect” abounds in digital dangers, some deadlier than others, but none of them much fun.

The title is meant to be taken as both verb and noun. The disconnect between people when we no longer talk, just text. The disconnect between the real world and the world on-line. The emotional disconnect engendered by disembodied texts, emails, etc.
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Terrence Malick’s “To the Wonder” is about a girl who lost her twirl.

Malick, of course, is the famously infertile filmmaker who once went two decades between movies. After blazing a name for himself with a pair of brilliant efforts in the 1970s, “Badlands” and “Days of Heaven,” Malick went all J.D. Salinger on us. Reclusive. Elusive. Legendary.

Finally, in 1998, he completed the fairly oblique albeit star-laden “The Thin Red Line,” a World War II tale that misused everybody from Sean Penn to George Clooney.

But it was pure genius compared to Malick’s follow-ups: “The New World,” an epic-sized bit of nonsense about Pocahontas, and the interminable — and interminably ludicrous — “The Tree of Life,” which co-starred Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and some dinosaurs.
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There is nothing like a good heist movie, and “Trance,” I’m afraid, is nothing like a good heist movie.

True, it begins with a clever bit of chicanery at a high-end auction. A priceless Goya is up for bids when the alarm system sounds.

A trusted employee, Simon (the ever-good James McAvoy), heroically tries to foil the thieves. In the process, he suffers a head wound.

As often happens in this sort of picture, Simon is actually an accomplice. But the knock on the head has messed things up…in his head. Which messes up everything else.
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I’ve only met a few people who loved movies as much as Roger Ebert did.

I’ve known fewer still who played a bad hand so well and so bravely. The cancer that finally got him was an exceptionally cruel disease — disabling and, as many of us saw in his final years, as disfiguring as anything dreamt up by any horror-movie-master.

Funny how upstarts become institutions. When Ebert and his Chicago Tribune rival, Gene Siskel, first started their Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down routine — first locally, then nationally — I know a lot of movie critics who wearily moaned, has it come to this? Two Thumbs UP???!!!! Or One Thumb Down
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When the top four movies at the box office are (in descending order) “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” “The Croods,” “Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor” and “Olympus Has Fallen,” which do you choose to write about?

Why not take a stab at all four?

“G.I Joe” is based on a doll — I mean, action figure — first popularized in 1964. He has gone through several incarnations since then, including movies, comics and video games. He has even, like Alice and her mushroom, changed sizes: 12 inches originally, then shrunk to 3 ¾ inches, then released in both sizes.
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Chile.

1988.

Tyrannical despot (is that redundant?) Augusto Pinochet has just (for the heck of it ?) called for a referendum on his leadership.

This is not a gracious gesture on his part. Under his iron-fisted rule, voting against him would be like voting against your right to breathe.

But as it turns out, there are many in Chile who would rather hold their breath indefinitely than rubber-stamp Pinochet’s right to rule.
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There are two movies opening this weekend, and I don’t want you to get them mixed up.

One is “Spring Breakers.” The other one is “The Gatekeepers.”

The first one is a “t-and-a” comedy (not necessarily intentional) about four girls in bikinis who get busted and end up working for James Franco.

I know. It also sounds awfully close to “Beach Blanket Butts.” However, the director is Harmony Korine who, if you haven’t already heard of him, specializes in the sort of calculated smut that’s supposed to be a turn-on in a forbidden-fruit sort of way.
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