Free Enterprise: Star Trek Beyond, reviewed.

Zachary Quinto is all ears. (Kimberly French/Paramount)

Star Trek Beyond, the third Trek in the 50-year-old franchise's rebooted "Kelvin timeline," wants to be a Skyfall-style cocktail of tradition and modernity. I wish it were bolder, but it's energetic and fun. Here's my NPR review.

Hot Buzz: I interviewed Simon Pegg for Air & Space / Smithsonian

Sofia Boutella and Simon Pegg in Star Trek Beyond (Kimberly French/Paramount).

What a pleasure it was to speak with Simon Pegg, an actor and writer whose work I've long admired, for my day job with Air & Space / Smithsonian magazine. I've been overseeing a special section of our September issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and I was especially keen to have Pegg — as the co-screenwriter of the new movie Star Trek Beyond, as well as one of its key cast members — be a part of our coverage. He was as enthusiastic and smart and funny as I'd dared hope. You can read the interview here, and my NPR review of Star Trek Beyond will be up Friday.

I wanted to discuss the blog post he wrote about George Takei, but our time was limited and I thought he'd already explained his position quite eloquently in prose. There was an obvious moment when we might've talked about how subsequent Trek movies might deal with the tragic death of Anton Yelchin last month, but I'll be honest: In the moment, I just didn't think to ask the question. Or about his role as Ogden Morrow in the film version of Ernest Cline's novel Ready Player One that Steven Spielberg just started shooting last month. He's a busy guy, this guy.

They mostly come out at night, mostly: ALIENS, briefly recalled on All Things Considered

Writer/director James Cameron with Sigourney Weaver and Michael Biehn on the Pinewood Studios set of ALIENS circa 1985. (Fox)

I was thrilled to get an invitation from All Things Considered to blab briefly with the great Audie Cornish about one of my favorite movies on the 30th anniversary of its release: SpaceCamp. No, it was ALIENS. Duh. The segment aired at the very end of an ATC that started off with live audio of the "Roll Call Vote!" chant from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. They're coming out of the goddamn walls, just like Private Hudson said.

You can hear the segment here. I had more to say than they could use, but that's radio, and hey, this is a show primarily devoted to, you know, real news. One of the first pieces I ever wrote for NPR was largely about ALIENS. I have a narrow range of interests, I guess.

Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Year With Which We're Still Making Contact, or We Ain't Afraid of No Ghosts But It Would Be Better If We Were

The ghostbustin' Class of 2016.

With the release of a new iteration of Ghostbusters — Sequel? Reboot? Don't know; the DC screening conflicted with the first session of the new Boxing Fundamentals class I'm teaching at Y — every single one of 1984's ten highest-grossing films has either been sequeled or remade. I believe '84 is the only year for which this is the case. In terms of what ruled the box office, it resembled 2014 a lot more than it did '83 or '85. Because I enjoy staring at box office charts, apparently, I wrote about this discovery for NPR Monkey See.

When the Legend Becomes Fact: Tarzan, reviewed.

Samuel L. Jackson as real-life Renaissance man George Washington Williams, with Alexander Skarsgård as fictional he-man Tarzan. (Jonathan Olley)

For NPR, I wrestled with the 201st (give or take) iteration of The Legend of Tarzan, a movie wherein in the Uncanny Valley is often represented by a valley. 

ID4ever: Independence Day: Resurgence, reviewed.

Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman showed up for the 20-years-later sequel to Independence Day.

The barely-screened-for critics Independence Day: Resurgence is not by any stretch a good movie, but neither was Independence Day, a film I saw at least twice and possibly three times during the grim summer of 1996. I'd even go so far as to say I enjoyed this barely-coherent follow-up a little more. Here's my alien autopsy, for the Village Voice.

You might also enjoy the War of 1996 website, a neato but apparently unsuccessful marketing tool for the movie. It offers a fictional timeline of the last two decades in the Independence Day-iverse, a couple of primitive but weirdly addictive games, an invitation to volunteer for the Earth Defense Force, and of course, information on real U.S. Army careers that might be right for you.

This Time It's Personal Again: The Shallows, reviewed.

Blake Lively v. Shark.

My NPR review of The Shallows, a Blake Lively-versus-sharks movie from Non-Stop and Run All Night director Jaume Collet-Serra, arrives just when it is needed. I am sorry I did not name the cinematographer in this review of a film about a woman trying to avoid becoming a shark's meal, because the cinematographer's name is Flavio Labiano. 

While I'm being crude, Iet me point out that Collet-Serra cuts directly from a shot of Lively reading a text message from her friend that says meeting up with that cute guy from last night; don't wait up for me to a shot of crabs scurrying along the beach.

Spy School Confidential: Central Intelligence, reviewed.

Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson (Claire Folger/Warner Bros.)

My NPR review of the not-great-but-plenty-good-enough-for-the-drive-in comedy that I keep thinking is called National Security but is in fact being released under the equally bland title Central Intelligence is up now.  You are alerted.