At 95% Fresh, this will be one of the most critically-acclaimed Hollywood films of the year. The critics are surely ranking it on a sliding scale:

• reboots tend to be disasters, this isn’t; and,
• as a crowd-pleasing summer blockbuster, it’s above average

It does not have the soul of Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry’s Trek is about thinly-veiled metaphors for philosophical and moral dilemmas combined with gee-whiz space opera. The camp naturally occurs: mid-century technology speculation and scifi ideas can’t be taken seriously, and it’s a ludicrous setting for exploring deep issues.

To be fair, modern audiences probably couldn’t handle true camp like that. So Abrams had a choice: either a bubble-gum action movie or a serious reimagining like Battlestar Galactica (Batman Begins is a half-hearted attempt at this). He chose the former; I am underwhelmed.

While I was watching, I couldn’t help but thinking that I’d rather be watching the BSG version:

Kirk’s father sacrifices the lives of hundreds of Starfleet seamen to save his newborn son. 20 years later, James joins Starfleet, the strong arm of the Federation’s colonialization program, to escape a shotgun wedding on Earth. Spock, child of a dying culture, joins to prove his superiority to the humans he paradoxically despises. Bones is right about the danger of transporters: they operate just within Starfleet’s acceptable loss rate. Sulu is in the closet since the Federation has officially genetically-engineered away the “gay defect”. Uhura openly has a relationship with one of her senior officers while enduring constant sexual harassment from another. etc…

Veer explores America’s fast-growing bicycling culture by profiling five people whose lives are inextricably tied to bicycling and the bike-centric social groups they belong to. The film follows these characters over the course of a year, offering a behind-the-scenes look at their personal struggles and triumphs. Veer examines what it means to be part of a community, and how social movements are formed.

There are two movies here. The bleeding-heart documentary (which has nothing to do with “culture” or social groups):

• Steven Kung runs an organization that teaches bike workshops; there’s some theme of international touring that gets mentioned but never explained
• Gabe Graff teaches bike safety to kids: he is very earnest and never shown interacting with other adults
• Scott Bricker lobbies the state government (although I’m not sure how a non-Oregonian was supposed to figure this out) on pro-bike traffic laws

And the journalistic look at the narrative of Portland bike culture: The zoobombers form the core of Portland’s bike social circle. Around them is built a summer bike festival. Lauren Pederson and some zoobombers got together to form the women’s ironic dance troupe The Sprockettes, which is prominently featured in the summer bike festival. Gabe Tiller, king of the zoobombers, and his queen* do a bunch of stuff at the summer festival and are also key players at the alternative winter bike festival.

I think the two themes were mashed into one documentary because the community organizers are too boring and the enthusiasts are too vapid to stand alone. The editing is very tight, so the material may have simply not worked in any other structure. The camera-work and sound is also top-notch, and the pacing is relatively good.

* Vancouver-based activist Ifny Lachance – thanks Dan!