“Star Trek Into Darkness” is like fan-boy fiction on a US$185 million budget. It's reverential, it's faithful, it's steeped in “Trek” mythology. It's also an excessively derivative what-if rehash of themes and interactions that came before, most of the characters lesser copies and even caricatures of the originals. The scenario's been hijacked and rejiggered from better “Trek” plots of decades ago, the best verbal exchanges lifted nearly verbatim from past adventures.

If any piece of classic American literature should be depicted on film with wildly decadent and boldly inventive style, it's “The Great Gatsby.” After all, who was the character of Jay Gatsby himself if not a spinner of grandiose tales and a peddler of lavish dreams?

A brother, his girlfriend, his sister and two friends all meet in a derelict cabin in the woods. It is a beautiful place. Rustic and isolated. The perfect location for the sister to kick her drug habit. They struggle as she trembles under the withdrawal. Then the devil arrives.

The Norwegian directing team of Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, whose biopic of World War II resistance fighter Max Manus was a huge hit on home turf, have turned to another native hero for "Kon-Tiki." One of the most-vaunted escapades of the 20th century,

An all-star comedy that leans on its stars to conjure laughs out of thin air, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is about veteran magicians who find themselves suddenly less relevant when Mr. New and Edgy shows up and upstages them on the Vegas Strip.

Does happily-ever-after marriage have a good ring to it? Apparently it does with Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) in “I Give It a Year;” so much so that they rush into a marriage fueled by their honeymoon bliss of a relationship. Quickly, problems, which they were blind to before, start to bubble up, and they slowly start to realize how fundamentally incompatible they are.

Plot-twisting puzzlers are a bubble market in the movies these days, with an arms race of “Inception”-like reality reversals that flip like a coin until dizzy audiences lose all interest in how it lands.

The “Iron Man 1” was rusty, and the second was just a rustier one with friends, but “Iron Man 3” is a Hollywood blockbuster superhero movie that ticks all the right boxes. It has the story, the special effects, the self-depreciating humor, all the explosions and action you could ask for, Gwyneth Paltrow and, of course, the arrogantly charismatic Robert Downey Jr.

Renown Hong Kong Director Johnnie To Kei-Fung (杜琪峰) presents to us the 50th film in his movie-making career. “Drug War” (毒戰), which follows the story of a police investigator in his life-threatening battle against the drug lords across China and Hong Kong, has already grossed over NT$600 million in the first two weeks since its release in China.

There are many heroes and wise people in this world, but to Greek philosopher Plato, only those who choose to use and share their good deeds with others are truly accomplished.