Voyage is a special treat for Trekkies and movie fans

 STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Time-travel plots are always tricky since they are not always clockwork in terms of logic or coherence. So it gave me great pleasure to remember that "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" is not only one of the best entries in the "Star Trek" saga but also one of the most delightfully escapist and wittiest time travel movies ever. 

A giant cigar-shaped alien probe is attempting to make contact with humpback whales on Earth. This is a big problem in the year 2286 because humpback whales are extinct. Why this probe is trying to make contact with the whales is a mystery wrapped inside a supernova where no man has gone before. That is one of the wondrous thrills of "Star Trek" - the very notion that new threats and cosmic complications are beyond our understanding since they take place in space and everything is light years ahead of us. It must be extra tricky to construct such a simple story and make us care and that is yet another positive from "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," thanks to the very capable hands of director Leonard Nimoy.

Time travel ensues that requires a Klingon ship from "Star Trek III" to travel at warp speed around the sun and back to San Francisco in 1986. The ship has a handy cloaking device so that allows our favorite members of the Enterprise crew to settle in Golden State Park. Smooth, debonair Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his reliable companions that includes the logical Vulcan Spock (Nimoy), the witty Dr. Bones (DeForest Kelley), Sulu (George Takei), the often exasperated engineer Scotty (James Doohan), Commander Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Nichelle Nichols as Uhura to catch the whales and bring them back. There's also a new member to the cast, the vigorous Catherine Hicks as Dr. Gillian Taylor - a marine mammal scientist who loves and cares for those whales at the aquarium and knows they will eventually be released back in the water. 

"Star Trek IV" is the most wildly unusual "Star Trek" flick in that there are no actual villains, no Klingons, no actual threat other than saving the future. What helps build its elaborate, ecologically-themed plot is the lovable Enterprise crew and their culture shock in reacting to ancient technology of the past. Whether it is Scotty thinking he can just issue commands to a computer; Spock dressed as some 1960's hippie unable to sense the ironies in speech, or any appetite for Italian food; Sulu making inquiries on 1986 helicopters which he deems as ancient or Chekov asking for directions to the nuclear "wessels," "Star Trek IV" has so much humor and so much rich humanity that it is impossible to resist. This is one of those rare sequels that works as a standalone movie, meaning you need not know anything about Star Trek to enjoy it. Special mention must go to Catherine Hicks, a wonderful actress and deeply unappreciated in my book, who adds icing to the cake. This voyage is a special treat for Trekkies and movie fans.  

Indignant look at the Holocaust through the lens of familial tranquility

 THE ZONE OF INTEREST (2023)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Years ago, I had watched a powerful, unblinking documentary on the Holocaust called "The Night Will Fall" that focused on combat cameramen documenting the liberation of Nazi camps. The footage recorded was beyond shock or horror - it was the very picture of genocide. In addition, the film also addressed how German families were living in homes outside these camps, supposedly unaware of what was happening. Jonathan Glazer's "The Zone of Interest" is not an unblinking account of horror in the margins of these homes, it is an unblinking account of apathetic families living next door to unimaginable horrors that we never see. 

One of the worst SS commandants of the Third Reich, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), approaches his job as apathetically as one can imagine - he may as well be working as a gardener doing some yard work. He leaves from his almost palatial home on horseback to the Auschwitz camp next door. In the film's unsettling opening of idyllic scenes near a lake, we see a family cavorting in a tall grass area and swimming in the lake without a care in the world. This placidity is important in seeing how some families are not unlike others. Scenes of domesticity in the house alongside the camps are about as normal as one would expect. Nobody, not Höss's wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), has any opinion on what is happening and we assume, based on her cruel verbal treatment of the Polish maid, that she approves of the extermination. The children who are always playing outside or in their rooms have no visual on the murders taking place other than hearing the sounds of rifle shots and a very clear visual of the smoke from the crematorium - they surely do not understand what unspeakable horrors are taking place. Only Hedwig's mother, who sees the fiery smoke emerging from that chimney at night, decides she can no longer take it and leaves.

"The Zone of Interest" is not for everyone and it surely will not appeal to those who were incredibly moved by "Schindler's List" (count me among them). Glazer's film has more of a standoffish approach, taking a backseat to character development or any colorful personalities and looking in as an observer and often from a distance. Close-ups are not used and there is no deciphering Höss's family's roots or their ambitions in life other than staying close-knit. Still, friction and unease figure into the film's 106-minute run time as Höss tells his wife he is being sent to a different camp - she's upset and refuses to live somewhere else. The prolonged unseen agony and brutality continue and all Höss can think about it is the best approach to killing Jews in huge numbers. There is faint hope in the form of a young Polish girl, shown in stunning solarized black-and-white scenes, where she places apples at the camp for the Jewish prisoners. She resembles a ghost-like angel bringing some solace to the victims and to us, the audience.

"The Zone of Interest" will keep you focused and angry at every turn about one of the worst crimes of inhumanity in the 20th century. Despite its unrelenting sense of doom, there is the added and necessary depiction of tranquility in the Höss family stable despite the very audible nightmare outside of it. It would be a crime to ignore this vivid, uniquely told and vital masterpiece from one of our masters of cinema.