The ninth instalment in one of the longest-running movie franchises, and the third with the Next Generation cast, Star Trek: Insurrection should prove satisfying for committed fans, although it's unlikely to be remembered as one of the classics of the series. This time out, the story revolves around a seemingly innocuous research project, observing the pastoral, rather hippyish inhabitants of a remote planet. When the Enterprise's android, Data, goes haywire and starts attacking his crewmates, his actions initiate a chain of discovery, uncovering a Federation conspiracy which Jean-Luc Picard and his crew aboard the Enterprise feel compelled to resist by force.
Like the last Star Trek movie, First Contact, Insurrection is directed by Jonathan Frakes, who also plays Commander William Riker, following in a long tradition of cast members taking the directorial controls. Once again, Frakes does a competent enough job, although Insurrection is less compelling than the last film, which benefited from the presence of Star Trek's most compelling baddies, the hive-like Borg. This time, the misty-eyed sentimentality occasionally recalls some of the excesses of the William Shatner era - Picard's romance with one of the planet's leaders is more than a little reminiscent of Kirk's dalliances with big-haired intergalactic lovelies in the original show.
But Star Trek: Insurrection has plenty of twists and surprises, with enough battle sequences to keep things exciting. It's much less dark than the last film, though there are some interesting hints that all is not well within the Federation, and that the Enterprise crew are less than happy with their Clinton-esque role of galactic peacekeepers. One problem is becoming apparent, however - a running subplot concerning Data's musing on his own ageless-ness is rather undercut by the fact that actor Brent Spiner has put on a few pounds and gained some wrinkles since last we saw him. Ageing has always been a major theme in the Star Trek series (never more so than in Insurrection), so the film-makers had better come up with some explanation for this strange, unexplained phenomenon.
The Acid House (Members and Guests) IFC, Dublin
Based on three stories from Irvine Welsh's book of the same title, Paul McGuigan's energetic, uneven, sometimes compelling film, set on the "sink estates" of Edinburgh, will probably appeal most to hardcore Welsh fans, who may already have seen the first part of the trilogy, The Granton Star Cause, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last year. A comically Kafka-esque tale of a lazy good-for-nothing, turned into a fly by a malevolent deity, and seeking revenge through food poisoning on the friends and family who rejected him, it's a typically extreme mixture of scatological humour, extreme fantasy and over-the-top violence, overlaid with the de rigueur soundtrack from a range of bands including Primal Scream, the Chemical Brothers and Oasis. It's also the weakest of the three stories, with unimpressive acting from a cast which seems to have difficulties with Welsh's demotic Edinburgh-speak. The acting gets better in Parts Two and Three (and the accents become more incomprehensible), one a Job-like tale of the sufferings endured by a mild-mannered young man at the hands of his promiscuous wife and psychotic neighbour, the other, a comic fantasy about a drug-addled football hooligan who finds himself trapped inside the body of a new-born baby in a middle-class household.
This last stars Ewen Bremner, who played the rubber-faced Spud in Trainspotting, and it's impossible not to draw comparisons between The Acid House and Danny Boyle's film (which McGuigan claims never to have seen). This movie is rougher around the edges, and less romantic about the violent, screwed-up lives it depicts, and it also has the advantage of not needing to shoehorn Welsh's episodic, anecdotal style into a single, feature-length framework. But the screenplay, adapted by Welsh himself from his own stories, shows less ingenuity in making the transfer from page to screen than John Hodge's script for Trainspotting. At times shambolic, sometimes funny, occasionally very bleak, The Acid House has a rude energy and audacious visual style that make it worth seeing, but be warned - don't go if you're easily offended or upset.
Rien Ne Va Plus (Members and Guests) IFC
In his publicity notes for Rien Ne Va Plus, Claude Chabrol announces that: "There are lots of titillating details and vague references that I distilled into this, my 50th film, to please a few die-hard fans who, I think, will get a good laugh out of it." If this sounds self-indulgent, well . . . it is. Rien Ne Va Plus is a rather self-satisfied little film, a reworking of the caper movie as a showcase for its two stars, Isabelle Huppert and Michel Serrault. The two play a pair of con artists, their relationship left deliberately opaque, who make a living relieving businessmen of small sums of money. On one of their excursions, to a Swiss skiing resort, they become embroiled in a much larger and more dangerous scam, which finally puts their lives in danger.
We're never really expected to believe in any of this silliness, which serves as a framing device for a series of comic vignettes, some more amusing than others (the best scene, unfortunately, is the first, and nothing afterwards matches it for timing and humour). Serrault plays the loveable rogue familiar from many previous roles, while Huppert seems to be enjoying her mysterious femme fatale performance. In fact, everyone seems very pleased with themselves, to an extent to which this mildly entertaining piece of fluff never really justifies.
