Movie Time 2.0: TT mini reviews

[Voncaster]

Sometimes I see what is on sale for Apple TV. All 8 Leprechaun films were sold for $10 on St.Patrick's Day and I now own 8 Leprechaun films. I'm pretty sure I should be ashamed by this.

Leprechaun (1993)

A pretty unremarkable horror movie. A leprechaun terrorizes a family and a maintenance crew in a remote cabin.

This is a really cheap movie set almost entirely in one location; a cabin. It feels like Leprechaun is influenced by Evil Dead (cabin setting), Child's Play (diminutive antagonist) and Nightmare on Elm Street (antagonist quips).

I suppose Leprechaun is most well known for having Jennifer Aniston in the cast. I'm not a huge fan of hers of friends, so that aspect of the film is neither here or there for me.

This movie is not without its charms, but I think the sequels will improve on the original.

Rating (Out of 5):


Leprechaun 2 (1994)

I think this is a pretty big improvement on the original. Its set in Hollywood instead of a remote cabin. There are a lot more locations in the second film.

The protagonist is the adopted son of a con artist who gives celebrity death tours. Its a pretty fun job for a horror film. Both the Leprechaun and the con artist are tricksters. Its a fun setup to have them both try and out trick one another.

The production values are much better than the first movie. Its not a great looking movie, but it certainly looks better than the first film. Leprechaun 2 feels like an episode of Charmed with more violence and cursing.

This is not high art, but I enjoyed Leprechaun 2. I could see myself revisiting it on St. Patrick's day.

Rating (Out of 5):

 

[Neo Skimbleshanks]

When I watched them I remember thinking the original was the worst, at least of the ones with Davis. (Haven’t seen the other… others?) Just a pretty annoying film, mostly due to the characters, and the last death is like 25 minutes in to the movie? Weird.

 

[Violentvixen]

I adored The Day the Earth Blew Up. It's the kind of thing I can't believe exists. After decades of gimmicky reinventions trying to make Loony Toons relevant Warner Brothers finally did what they should have all along. Blew Up is an exercise in a classic style executed to a high degree. And you know what? WB was probably right to chase gimmicks instead. This style of cartoon--elegant and classy though it is--doesn't appeal to general audiences and hasn't for many many years. That just means that for animation fans Blew Up is that special kind of treat: not just an exemplar of the form but the rare passion project that exists despite its environment, like a bright chromide amid brackish waters.

Gorgeous movie! My daughter made it through the whole thing, even. (She got pretty squirmy by the end).

I am very disappointed that neither of you mentioned that there's a scene scored to Powerhouse. An important and delightful addition that I did not expect. My only complaint is that I wanted more Looney Tunes cartoon physics stuff in the movie but that's okay, it wasn't the tone they were going for.

I of course loved Petunia. "You're weird, you lick stuff you shouldn't and you're a nerd." She's great. Having a hard time finding screenshots of the scenes of her doing cool things but I was thrilled at how much characterization she got and that she drove the plot along in a few spots.

 

[jpfriction]

am very disappointed that neither of you mentioned that there's a scene scored to Powerhouse. An important and delightful addition that I did not expect.

Oh, definitely my favorite scene. “ooh factory scene I wonder if they’ll…there it is.”

 

[Voncaster]

The Mist (2007)
Fear changes everything

This is a first time watch for me.

A mysterious and dangerous mist engulfs towns people while they are in a grocery store. The towns people have to work together to survive.

During the first 30 minutes or so of this film. I thought it would be an all time great horror movie for me. I really like movies where people are trapped in a situation and have to figure a way out (Alien, Deep Blue Sea, Tremors, etc.).

Early on I thought the film was very good. There is a grocery store of people from different backgrounds and there is some heated discussion on what to do. Do you venture out into the mist or wait and hope help is on the way? Can you trust strangers (are people fundamentally good)? Who do you send out for dangerous exploration?

As the film plays out there were a couple of things that I didn't like as much.

This movie is too long: Its 2h 6m. I think the films should have been trimmed a bit to tighten it up.

The tone of the film is increasingly dark: A teenager dies early on. A worker dies from burns during an attack. Towards the end a religious zealot gains mind share of the grocery store. She acts a judge, jury and executioner. She sentences people to death.

This movie reminds me a lot of Tremors. Both have small towns where people work together to survive. In Tremors the towns people work together better and its more fun. In the Mist there is more division and the tone is bleaker. The Mist maybe more realistic, but I found myself wanting a little more fun injected into the film.

Comparing The Mist to Tremors, feels similar to me as comparing 28 Days Later to the Romero's Dawn or Day. 28 Days later may be more realistic with its bleak tone. Dawn and Day have a more fun tone despite the apocalyptic setting. I guess I prefer the later; I want more fun or moments of levity at the end of the world.

Despite my personal preferences for tone I did like the Mist.

On an aside, the CGI is all over the place. The first attack with CGI tentacles looks awful. It looks like fx work from Star Trek Voyager (early CGI vibes). Later there are extra dimensional spiders and giant mantis creatures shrouded in the mist that look really good. The creature design is mostly great.

Rating (out of 5):

 

[Octopus Prime]

I realized that, if I watch one a week, I’ll have time to watch every single Mission Impossible movie before Final Reckoning comes out.

The first one… is better than I remembered. Mainly because I remembered it being pretty different form the rest of the series so it’s less jarring that it’s a spy thriller rather than an action movie. And it does Spy Thriller very well.

It’s also the most 1996-ass movie you’ve ever seen

 

[Bongo]

I watched The Masque of the Red Death (1964), directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, adapted from a story by Edgar Allan Poe.

What a delightfully macabre, chilling, unpredictable, old-fashioned motion picture. Full of stunning sets and void of the slightest hint of realism. Vincent Price is on screen almost all of the time and everyone else is taking lessons from the master. I was especially pleased with Skip Martin as the jester.

If at all possible, someone should show this movie to Koji Igarashi.

 

[Octopus Prime]

It was the incredible Weekend of Twos;

Mission Impossible 2 I still consider to be the weakest of the series but it’s also a really consistently good series so that doesn’t mean much. IIRC it’s the only one where Tom Cruise isn’t disavowed by the CIA and has to go rogue to save the world from an existential threat so maybe that’s the secret sauce it was missing. Anyway, the last half hour or so is Tommy C Flash Kicking his way through a million bad guys and having absolutely no romantic chemistry with the female lead even though they had a very sexy car crash.

Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan was overall much better and lives up to its reputation as One of the Good Star Treks. I don’t have nearly the same level of affection for TOS that I do for the later series but its still a really good movie; the entire climactic final battle was a spaceship fight where nobody can see anything or do anything and it’s gripping as hell.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which people say is very boring, but I enjoyed it. Despite having no Trek experience outside of a few bad Season One episodes of TNG, I really got into it. When do the movies stop being good?

 

[Lokii]

Depends on who you ask. (III)

 

[R.R. Bigman]

People don’t like The Voyage Home? It’s got whales in it!

 

[Lokii]

No people love it. I, III, V, Generations and beyond are all frequently cited as the Bad Films. Personally, I think 1's a hoot, so III's the first of the rough ones for me.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Good to hear. 1 is a good sci-fi story that maybe has too many pin-up shots of the Enterprise, but I can’t imagine what fans of the TV show felt seeing it on the big screen in ‘79. I get why it’s the way it is.

 

[Octopus Prime]

My main issue with 1 is that it was two episodes of the original show mashed together and stretched out way longer.

Visually amazing, but *boy* did they want you to drink in every detail of every one of those models.

 

[RT-55J]

My mom watched TMP when it premiered and has always said she loved the experience. The fans in the audience alwere eating it up.

 

[Beowulf]

No people love it. I, III, V, Generations and beyond are all frequently cited as the Bad Films. Personally, I think 1's a hoot, so III's the first of the rough ones for me.

First Contact keeps up the "even-numbered ones are good" trend. Insurrection actually isn't bad; it's just a double-length TNG episode. Nemesis...yeah, that one's terrible.

 

[jpfriction]

I liked Generations fine when I saw it originally but in retrospect it was pretty stupid.

 

[Exposition Owl]

Nemesis...yeah, that one's terrible.

Which is tough, because I wanted so badly for it to be good. Nemesis wants to do for the Romulans what Undiscovered Country did for the Klingons, with a young Tom Hardy in a starring role, which would both be amazing if the movie worked, but it just … really doesn’t. They made some really terrible editing choices, too—I seem to remember that there was a deleted scene with Picard talking to Data that gave some crucial motivation for the plot, but they cut it out, presumably because the scene wasn’t sufficiently action packed. The fact that the filmmakers apparently wanted a Next Gen movie to be an action spectacle above all else is probably at the root of a lot of the movie’s problems, honestly.

 

[gogglebob]

Late in life, my grandfather had a stroke. Half of his body was paralyzed, and that impacted everything from his walking to his speech. He gradually learned to talk again after the stroke, but he would forever walk with the "limp" of a man that basically carried dead weight with half of his body. In this state he was by no means stealthy. It was nearly impossible to not know when he was present in the room, if only because it would take a long time for him to make his way across any area.

That said...

I was watching the special features on the DVD of the then recently released Serenity, the movie sequel to the television series Firefly. Joss Whedon was giving an interview, and he was glowing and saying something along the lines of "we had a dinky little tv show that got cancelled by the networks, and thanks to an amazing fan reaction, we were able to come back with a movie. That kind of thing just doesn't happen in Hollywood!" And, somehow, against all odds and rules of physics, my grandfather apparently teleported into the living room, and gruffly replied to the television, "That's exactly what happened with Star Trek. And they had a better looking ship than that thing," and he gestured at the nearby DVD box for Firefly. Then he just shuffled along, his work here done.

God I miss that man.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

The Even/Odd Star Trek movies meme is just that. A meme. Old fan orthodoxy of yore was often comically bad. The same fans used to say DS9 was bad/not real Star Trek as well. It's best people watch and make up their own minds.

The fact that the filmmakers apparently wanted a Next Gen movie to be an action spectacle above all else is probably at the root of a lot of the movie’s problems, honestly.

It wasn't necessarily the filmmakers. They were just responding to the prevailing attitudes from fans at the time. And movie goers, by and large, didn't just want a long TV episode. You could get that for free at home, of course. If people were going to pay good money to sit in a theater with a bunch of strangers, they'd better get to see a MOVIE. A bombastic spectacle that had the budget to match. First Contact was an action spectacle and made a lot of money. Insurrection was more like a long TV episode and fans hated it.

I've come around on both Insurrection and Nemesis in recent years. As a kid, Insurrection was a disappointing theater experience. These days, it's nice to watch as a chill, very elaborate 2-part TV episode. Also, if you have access to it, PLEASE watch Insurrection with the director's commentary. Jonathan Frakes brought Marina Sirtis on and the two just treat the whole exercise like a riff-track. It might be a top-3 theatrical Star Trek experience if you watch it that way.

Nemesis I had fun watching in theaters, even if it was an objectively dumb movie. It has some of the best ship fights in the franchise, and Brent Spiner doing Brent Spiner things is always fun. But most of my vitriol towards it was due to it killing the franchise/being the de facto end of TNG. Now that we live in a world where that's no longer the case, it's a fair bit easier to judge it on its own merits. It's still not a good movie, but it's at least has plenty of enjoyable aspects to it and isn't the absolute nadir of Star Trek films/the franchise as a whole anymore.

 

[Büge]

It wasn't necessarily the filmmakers. They were just responding to the prevailing attitudes from fans at the time.

No, it was. They wanted to recapture the glory of Star Trek II and VI, and failed. I remember in the lead-up to the film reading an interview with John Logan boasting that he'd written a villain to rival Khan*. Fans didn't want a retread of familiar shit. They didn't want big explosions and villains that scream. They wanted main characters that felt like a family. They wanted Horatio Hornblower, not Anakin Skywalker.

I think in the back of the producers' minds, they know the writing was on the wall. Insurrection got a lukewarm reception. The cast was visibly older. Voyager had ended and Enterprise was floundering. Brent Spiner wanted out. Nemesis felt like a contractual obligation. Quite literally, in the director's case. Stuart Baird was only brought on because he'd done some uncredited editing on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and the studio owed him a favour.

But most of my vitriol towards it was due to it killing the franchise/being the de facto end of TNG. Now that we live in a world where that's no longer the case, it's a fair bit easier to judge it on its own merits. It's still not a good movie, but it's at least has plenty of enjoyable aspects to it and isn't the absolute nadir of Star Trek films/the franchise as a whole anymore.

That's funny. My vitriol towards it was that it was a bad film. It was a wasted opportunity to send the cast off on a high note (again), and they chose to just do a lukewarm retread of Wrath of Khan. As a comparison, The Final Frontier was long considered the low-water mark for Star Trek, but at least it was striving for something. Bill Shatner may have written and directed a vanity picture, but it felt like there was some sincerity to the story and theme, and at least it had things for characters to do. The actors seemed like they were making lemonade. With Nemesis, the writers and director didn't seem to know what to do with characters that weren't Picard or Data. Crusher and La Forge may as well have not even appeared in the film (if you look at the plot summary on Wikipedia, it doesn't even mention La Forge). Troi existed only as a rape victim. Riker's fight with the monster guy could easily have been Worf's fight with the monster guy. Final Frontier has a camp quality that's enjoyable with the right mindset. Everything about Nemesis is dour and gloomy and self-serious and everyone just seems tired.

I still believe the studio sent the film to get slaughtered by Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Sometimes I believe they were right to do it.

*Romulan Picard's Clone was a stupid concept from jump, but if they REALLY wanted to do a Wrath of Khan revenge story, Sela was RIGHT THERE.

 

[RT-55J]

I enjoyed Nemesis when I saw it in theaters, though in my defense I was 11 at the time (haven't watched the film in like 15-20 years). No idea if I'd still enjoy it as a functioning adult.

As for the Final Frontier, it ended up gaving us this, so it can't be all bad:

 

[JBear]

The Final Frontier (V) is my favourite Star Trek film after Voyage Home (IV), and no, it's not ironic enjoyment, while Wrath of Khan (II) is my least favourite. I will not be taking further questions at this time.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

No, it was. They wanted to recapture the glory of Star Trek II and VI, and failed.

What if I told you, every action-oriented Star Trek movie was trying to recapture the glory of Star Trek II, and that included First Contact.

I think in the back of the producers' minds, they know the writing was on the wall.

This is exactly why they went the route they went. VOY/DS9/ENT never recaptured the TNG lightning in a bottle, so they wanted to make sure one of their primary tentpoles did.

I remember in the lead-up to the film reading an interview with John Logan boasting that he'd written a villain to rival Khan

Stuart Baird was only brought on because he'd done some uncredited editing on Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and the studio owed him a favour.

These two heading the project wasn't just because the studio was going through the motions, IMO. If anything, they were trying to spice things up. By this point, all of the old guard who made TNG what it was, had either burnt out, moved on to other things, or were made to fall on their swords for Insurrection. Bringing in outsiders to make a Star Trek thing is not inherently a bad thing. Nicholas Meyer was an inexperienced director/writer and famously didn't know the first thing about Star Trek and actually rather disliked it. (I distinctly remember reading an interview with him where he characterized Star Trek as a "Republican fever dream.") I think the biggest difference between Meyer and Logan/Baird is honestly the burden of expectations.

TOS only ran for 3 seasons. It didn't particularly care about canon. Only Spock, Kirk, and McCoy had any appreciable characterization. Most of the world we now know of Star Trek hadn't been created yet. And it came during a time where all of this felt new and people weren't burdened by generations of media savviness. A guy like Nicholas Meyer could come in, watch a few dozen episodes, and write a film that felt completely out of character with the preceding material, and people went along with it on its own merits.

Meanwhile, Nemesis was following up 650+ episodes of TV and 9 theatrical films, and 35+ years/generations of fans to contend with.

I think a lot of what Nemesis was trying to do was actually pretty interesting in the abstract. It's just a lot of it got mettled with, or lay on the cutting room floor, etc. And as a TNG thing specifically it failed at recognizing a lot of TNGs inherent strengths and why people liked it in the first place. (e.g. that it was an ensemble show.)

*Romulan Picard's Clone was a stupid concept from jump, but if they REALLY wanted to do a Wrath of Khan revenge story, Sela was RIGHT THERE.

I actually really like the idea of pitting Picard against an evil clone of himself. Picard as an individual is an extremely moral person who earnestly believed in the idea that mankind had evolved past its barbarous infancy. He has a very strong sense of self, and about who he is. His own ego is borderline narcissistic, tempered by an even greater sense of compassion. And forcing him to confront a "but there for the grace of god go I" scenario is ripe for interesting drama. We saw in Tapestry that he would rather die than lose his identity, and here is a man who he recognizes as himself, just with a wildly different upbringing and worldview. There was an attempt to have Picard explore his inner demons, his flaws, and also the best parts of himself in this nature vs nurture story. It just fell flat/ultimately took a back seat to Hollywood pyrotechnics, despite Tom Hardy's best attempts.

 

[Lokii]

On further reflection, all Star Trek movies are bad.

 

[RT-55J]

counterpoint: whales

 

[gogglebob]

Fine. On further reflection, all whales are bad.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Fine. On further reflection, all whales are bad.

Some of them are killers.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Then we're in agreement; all killers are Star Trek.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Mission Impossible 3 manages to live up to its title by doing something I considered impossible; making me like a JJ Abrams movie.

It’s the MI that finally established the formula the series would follow and added in the secret sauce that is Simon Pegg (though he was only in a small role in this). This time the Romantic Lead that Tom Cruise Has No Chemistry With is Michelle Monaghan and… I don’t want to say this is the origin of the Tom Cruise Silly Run, but it’s certainly the first time it’s shown up in this series.

CURRENT POWER RANKINGS
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2