This week’s movie releases

Before plunging into the next Star Wars saga, reboot king J. J. Abrams delivers the second installment of his all-new Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness. Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto are back as Kirk and Spock, this time hunting down intergalactic terrorist John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch of the BBC’s Sherlock) after he launches a devastating attack on Earth. Simon Pegg returns to the Enterprise engine rooms as Scotty, while Zoe Saldana is back as Uhura, Karl Urban is Dr McCoy and John Cho plays Sulu.

Another sequel and another supervillain — though this time of the retired variety — rear their heads this week in animated comedy Despicable Me 2. Having put aside his life of crime, former evil genius Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is settling into life as a father to three adopted girls. But he and his little yellow Minions soon find themselves called upon to help hunt down the newest super baddie in town. Kristen Wiig, Russell Brand, Ken Jeong and Steve Coogan provide additional vocal talent.

Featuring a script by the author himself, Midnight’s Children is the big-screen conversion of Salman Rushdie’s 1980 magical realist novel about two babies switched at birth on the night of India’s 1947 declaration of independence from Britain. Deepa Mehta directs.

Geoffrey Rush stars as an emotionally stunted art expert with a lucrative scam on the go in The Best Offer, a romantic thriller from Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore. Sylvia Hoeks plays the young agoraphobic heiress he encounters, while Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland also feature.