Streaming Wars: “Star Trek 4″ Is Dead. Long Live “Star Trek IV”!

Your weekly film queue.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Paramount Pictures/Allstar)

HORROR PICK:

Possessor (2020) is like a blood-drenched version of Inception. Christopher Abbott (Girls) and Andrea Riseborough (Oblivion) star in this mind-twisting, body-snatching horror flick, which sees director Brandon Cronenberg following in the sadistic footsteps of his father, David (Crimes of the Future). Given that Brandon’s latest film, Infinity Pool, features a breastfeeding Alexander Skarsgård, it’s likely to be even more insane. Hulu.

HOLLYWOOD PICK 1:

It’s appalling that the Oscars snubbed Top Gun: Maverick’s Claudio Miranda for a Best Cinematography nomination, but the Chilean mastermind did get an Academy Award for Ang Lee’s Life of Pi (2012). Based on Yann Martel’s bestselling novel, the film is maddeningly literal on land, but scenes of Pi (Suraj Sharma) and shockingly convincing CGI tiger Richard Parker adrift in the Pacific Ocean achieve a hallucinatory beauty. HBO Max.

DANIELS PICK:

Before Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert propelled Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan into the multiverse with Everything Everywhere All at Once, they cast Daniel Radcliffe as a corpse whose farts defy death in Swiss Army Man. Paul Dano co-stars in this singular (to say the least) take on the desert island subgenre. Paramount+.

HOLLYWOOD PICK 2:

Paramount and producer J.J. Abrams still can’t get their act together to make a fourth Star Trek film with Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. But you can always revisit Leonard Nimoy’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), which features a time-traveling Spock searching 1980s San Francisco for whales while wearing nothing but a bathrobe and a headband. Top that, J.J.! HBO Max.

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