DVD Reviews: Star Trek, Dark room & Niko

Star Trek
Cast Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana
Director JJ Abrams
Genre Sci-Fi/Adventure
Rating PG-13

Trekkies rejoice. Here’s another golden opportunity to traverse space, the final frontier, and boldly go where no one has gone before. This is the best adventure in the series because there were no budget constraints (the sets are spectacular) and Abrams made sure that there would be a lot of action. Even if you are not a Star Trek fan, you will enjoy watching this movie. Longtime followers of the series will miss the young William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy (though he features in a cameo role) on this trip, but Pine and Quinto show that they too are good at it.
Star Trek is a prequel that goes to the time when Kirk was born and his emergence 20 years later as a Starfleet Academy cadet. The adventure begins when the USS Enterprise is summoned to save the federation of planets.
 

Dark room
Cast Reed Diamond,  Shawn Pyfrom, Greg Grunberg
Director Mike Hurst
Genre Horror
Rating R

Lying in a mental asylum for 15 years, a nameless man (Diamond) who has lost his memory gets an opportunity to try a drug awaiting FDA approval. The injection is meant to help him regain his memory but it doesn’t seem to work. Instead, after intense initial convulsions, he starts seeing horrible creatures, a sea of mud, bloody scenes and chains. Realising that continuing to stay at the institution will not help, he escapes and befriends a young boy, Stanley (Shawn Pyfrom). Stan takes the man home and puts him up at his stepdad Bob’s (Grunberg) garden workshop. In exchange he wants the man to pick the lock of Bob’s darkroom
to find out what the prohibited place contains.
The movie ends with a novel twist. Watch this DVD.
 

Niko & The Way To The Stars
Voices Morgan Jones,  Andrew McMahon, Aileen Muthen
Directors Michael Hegner,  Kari Juusonen
Genre Animation
Rating G
Christmas is just around the corner, and this movie serves to usher in the festive mood. Niko, a young reindeer living in Happy Valley, learns one day that his father belongs to the legendary Flying Forces that pull Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve. If his father (who he has never seen) can fly, so can he, reasons the reindeer boy. But all attempts at liftoff fail. Instead he is almost eaten by a pack of wolves who are also planning to gobble up Santa and eventually all the little boys and girls that the old man visits. To thwart them Niko, accompanied by Julius the flying squirrel and Wilma the singing mouse, must make the treacherous trip to Santa’s place. Will they be able to ford the River of Doom?