Star Trek Into Darkness intends to evoke, presumably, the idea that catastrophe lurks around the corner, that the hair-raising events of 2009’s Star Trek were child’s play compared to what happens now; that the proverbial shit has gotten real. A more defensible interpretation would be that the title refers to the franchise reboot’s continued slide into the shadow of previous movies.

Director JJ Abrams' latest fare is a fun movie; Star Trek Into Darkness represents what most people want from a summer movie: beautiful to look at, engaging action scenes, epic scale, and humor. There are familiar actors doing familiar things in an entertaining way and really, right there this movie has exceeded 80 to 90 percent of movies released in the last eight months. If you enjoyed Star Trek, there’s an excellent chance you’ll enjoy this movie as well... just not as much.

Let's be honest: from the moment Liz & Dick was announced, we all knew it was going to be pretty bad. Just how bad would be subjective to the individual hate-watcher, but it was enough of a foregone conclusion that it would be irresponsible for a reviewer not to acknowledge it. Thing is, did anyone know that it was going to be this bad? At its best, it might have been analogous to Mommie Dearest: a fabulously bitchy flame-out that immolated an icon and old Hollywood along with her. But Liz can't even muster the energy to do that.

Magic Journey to Africa is the most bonkers banana-pants, down-right baffling movies I have ever seen, and the fact that this was produced for children only makes it more confusing. This 49-minute movie, which was originally presented in “Giant Screen Theaters,” takes a young white girl Jana (Eva Gerretsen) from her home and parents, and she is transported to Africa with her magical flying unicorn. She is searching for a mysterious African boy who she saw trying to pickpocket patrons at a restaurant. She believes he has gone back to Africa, and she keeps having visions of him riding his bike across the African savanna. Where did she go in Africa? It is never indicated, perhaps because the writer thought Africa was all one big country with one culture and lots of poor people. From that point, the story becomes an incoherent string of events involving spirit gods, evil crows, and children reading storybooks to elephants, all of which make no sense and have even less meaning to me.

If you're someone who despises shelter dogs and feels that they should all be destroyed, perhaps you should watch Shelter Me to see if you feel differently. Hosted by Katherine Heigl and funded by Ellen Degeneres’s Halo, Shelter is a rather single-minded appeal to get you to adopt a dog (a fact celebrated in a New York Times pull quote on the back of the box). A noble goal, if not necessarily compelling drama. At its worst, Shelter Me plays like an exceptionally dry infomercial; at its best, it’s an excuse to look at a bunch of cute dogs.

The terrific third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation ended on a high note, with one of television’s greatest-ever cliffhangers in “The Best of Both Worlds: Part 1.” The show’s writers brought back one of the series’ most memorable and terrifying villains, the Borg, and set the stake so high that viewers were left breathless, forced to wait until the show’s return in the fall to find out whether or not the show’s biggest star, Sir Patrick Stewart, would be remaining in the captain’s chair on the Enterprise. The resulting episode, as well as the season four premiere that picked up where the finale left off, have been edited together for this Blu-ray release to create an exciting movie-length drama that shows how surprisingly epic the small screen can be at its best.

A New York-based crime drama starring a bunch of people I've never heard of, the movie tells the story of two brothers caught in the middle of a drug-money-gone-missing plot. The flick has the energy of early-Scorsese, particularly reminiscent of my personal favorite - Mean Streets. Unfortunately, the dialogue is spotty and the acting leaves a lot to be desired. I guess it's fair to say this is Scorsese meets Besson. Some very Leon-esque moments (including a villain who seems to be doing his best Gary Oldman, chewing scenery like a champ).

Watching Manborg is less like watching a film in 2013 and more like being totally submerged in a violent video game circa 1985. Then again, does one expect any less from a film titled Manborg? Like Tank Girl and Mad Max’s deranged bastard child, with a dash of the devil himself thrown in, Manborg chronicles the adventures of the titular character, a half-human, half-robot warrior bent on saving Earth from the rule of Hell. That’s right, the villains of Manborg are from way down underworld and led by the impossible evil Count Draculon, a demonic despot who seems to enjoy gnawing on human’s throats as much as his nominal forefather.

When the youth of the present look back upon their salad days through the lens of cinema, will it still look like the 1960s? Beginning roughly in the 1980s (and probably climaxing with The Wonder Years), the baby boomer generation began to encapsulate their teen years with a documentarian vigor perhaps unmatched by any other generation in history, so much so that what’s striking about Not Fade Away isn’t its insight or its performances or its period details so much as just how indistinct it seems, despite the participation of David Chase (creator ofThe Sopranos). Though the music so important to its lead characters is era-specific, its feelings, mood, and big picture are not. It could presumably have taken place at any time since, but like the coming-of-age narrative itself, it feels trapped, beholden to a time period that hasn’t been repaying the favor for a while now.

I remember thinking that there was no way Tom Cruise could best Werner Herzog in fisticuffs. I still feel that way. Herzog has survived gunshots, saving Joaquin Phoenix from a car accident and a friendship with Klaus Kinski. Casting Herzog as the villain in this would've been more than enough to sell the overall plot, but adding Jai Courtney as his primary henchman and sniper is a brilliant touch. Courtney, who would later go on to play the younger McClane in A Good Day To Die Hard, is suitably menacing without being over-the-top. I'm fine with the dude taking over the Die Hard franchise, as he's a solid action star in his own right. He also works well as the blunt instrument Herzog's character, The Zec, uses in exacting vengeance on those who are getting in the way of the villainous machinations. Courtney is a believable counter to Cruise's Reacher.