[Closed] Recent Viewing Part III

WARNING: Long post:

I watched three movies in last three days, all deserve recognition.

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Yes, first time watching. A very good movie. I always was a Star Trek fan, but having been brought up by The Next Generation series, I have never seen anything with the old crew except The Voyage Home, which I watched as a kid and really don't remember. This actually was the first Star Trek movie I watched and having a good source I intend to watch all six original Star Trek features.

The story is really good and Ricardo Montalban's acting as Khan is amazing. It doesn't alas mean that the acting is great from all sides. I don't particularly enjoy the acting of the original crew. The best is Leonard Nimoy as Spock, who gave A LOT of class to his character and the sense of logic, his acting is also the highlight of the new Star Trek reboot. The worst actor is William Shatner. Of course the KHAAAAAAAN scream is legendary, but he just lacks a bit of charisma, which for example Patrick Stewart does have and his Picard is low-key charismatic. To put it short, I much prefer the acting of the next generation movies and series with Stewart being obviously the highlight there.

The direction is very good, Meyer did a great job with what we had there. Cinematography very decent and the score works amazing. Holy shit! I've heard the expanded release, though I don't have it yet. I didnt' get it only because I didn't have to order it right then, because it wasn't limited. That means I can get the Horner score and I will do it as soon as my finances are in more stable situation.

Once I've seen Wrath of Khan, I had to see

Star Trek: The Search for Spock

Nimoy is not only a good actor (and he's not on screen for most of the movie), but also a very competent director. Of course there are questions like why couldn't they get Kirstie Alley to reprise her role as Saavik. Robin Curtis is also competent though. A very decent sci-fi movie, if only having a bit less space scenes than Khan. The Klingons were cool with a very good AND serious delivery from Christopher Lloyd, something you don't see often.

Horner's score also very good, less edgy than his Khan score, which had some purely horror cues.

The Hurt Locker

Highly controversial, but ultimately critically acclaimed film. I don't know where to start, really.

Many people criticize the movie for being "boring, unrealistic", sometimes you can notice viewers were OFFENDED by Bigelow's movie. What is it about really?

It is not about cowboys, it is not anti-war or pro-war. It is about an addiction to danger. It's about a man for whom disarming bombs is the only thing he can do decently. Do we get to understand him and finally find him likable? Yes, we do. Is he a competent leader? Yes, he is. Is he nuts? No, not necessarily.

The movie to me is really about adrenaline. This is why the suspense in the setpieces goes so high and doesn't stop. We have to be in his world with him. The camera work, editing is great. It's not just handheld to BE handheld. It's about being *there* with the EOD people.

Some people have issues with the realism - it works for me and there may be discrepancies - it's not a military person directing it, even with the best research it won't work.

The directing is very tight, planned out, nothing accidental goes there. In that way, perfect. Controlling the environment and giving an edge to the story earned Kathryn Bigelow her Oscar. I find the discussions how she BEAT HER EX in the Oscars is ridiculous - Cameron RECOMMENDED the story to her, when she wanted to do something else and himself called it "The Platoon of Iraq War", that is, he might have even - Heaven forbid - voted for his ex-wife.

Cinematography and editing are really good - the storytelling is pretty amazing, I must say, even if the plot is a bit weak and evidently written around the huge setpieces. The score works very well, even if it can't pass as music sometimes. Exactly what the film needed.

Very good movie, one of my all-time favorite war movies.

I watched Poltergeist with someone who'd never seen it before. I like the soundtrack not especially the movie. Has anyone else noticed the style and orchestration of Debussy toward the end of the film? If I didn't know classical or soundtrack material I'd say it was from LaMer.
Thomas

You should really watch the original -- one of the best TV series ever made:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061287/
(some episodes can be watched at IMDB, linked from Hulu, so it may be banned in other countries)

Well, he said in his post he had not seen any of the episodes of the original, so...

Sounds like my experiences. Having grown up with TNG, the old crew does nothing for me. I saw The Voyage Home as a kid too, and have tried to suppress my memories of it ever since.

I haven't enjoyed any of the ST movies with the old crew, I've found them all extraordinarily terrible.

Peter

Okay, the films aren't masterpieces, and I love them mostly because of childhood nostalgia (Khan is the best one I think), but the Kirk crew have so much more chemistry than the Picard crew. I grew up with both and would take Captain Kirk in a heartbeat over Picard.

Captain Kirk and Spock.... CAPTAIN KIRK AND SPOCK MAN!

None of them are perfect, but I think Khan is the best one because it has the simplest yet most effective plot: it's a simple revenge movie. Khan is the ultimate baddie for Kirk to overcome. And the music just makes it that much better!

I haven't seen that many of the original episodes, and I can plainly see there's chemistry between them. Not the first film, but certainly the others.

Some of the comments on this forum never ceases to astound me!

The old cast has chemistry and not much else. I do find Kirk having no charisma at all, but Spock on the other hand has something I love about Picard - a restrained low-key charisma, which is just wonderful.

I loved Wrath of Khan (while they want to see it as swashbucklers, along with Search for Spock and while Horner scores are DEFINITELY swashbucklers, even if Khan has lots of cues of plain horror, to me it's more of a submarine movie, after seeing one of my all-time favorites - Crimson Tide - and Hunt for Red October in a row, I couldn't help but chuckle when Kirk was saying "Mr. Spock, you have the con") and I loved the message of it - a movie about age and death.

Star Trek to me has very interesting themes to speak of, mostly social dramas. I love Star Wars like the next guy, but the social themes and taking a few steps into the ambitious SF territory (boundaries of humanity and boundaries of science) make me more of a Trek fan. Star Wars is an opera and more of a historical allegory - all comparisons of the Empire to Third Reich are spot-on. Star Trek on the other hand, while having a complex, interracial, political world as well, is more a social drama and more character-driven, which two things I love in movies more than just entertainment. This is why I much prefer the 1970s to the 1980s, which brought us things like Commando or 48 Hours.

The old crew has incredible chemistry between them, that's why I love to see them interacting with each other in each of the six films. The Spock vs McCoy debates never get tired and Kirk's ability to be a human first and a commander second is very well portrayed by Shatner. The Shatner-Nimoy-Kelley dynamic is what makes these films so entertaining. And what about Scotty's funny lines? Seriously I wouldn't trade any of them for the TNG crew. I love those early movies, though they aren't always of the same quality, there's never one I skip on purpose. I haven't been brought up on the original series, nor TNG however.

The Next Generation is an odd beast here, because each of the actors play better than the actors in the original series (at least in the movies), but indeed the "crew" as a crew isn't that amazing. The best interactions are possibly between Picard and Data and everybody else.

Watch it again after seeing all the original crew movies (and some episodes of the series, it seems). I've heard there are very subtle references which are quite obvious to the fan community.

I have seen all the new crew features - Generations (not too good), First Contact (very good, on par with the best "old crew" movies), Insurrection (quite decent and ably directed by Jonathan Frakes, as well as First Contact), Nemesis (I liked that one, because it's a darker twist on the Trek story, darker than Wrath of Khan I'd dare say). And you miss out on some really good Jerry Goldsmith (IMHO) scores.

Really? Loved it.

Bad, I'm afraid!

Goodness, come back RTD! Some of your scripts were a bit iffy but at least you appeared to have a tight reign on the whole show. Here, one by one, the "iconic" enemies seem to be being stripped of any value. This week's episode seemed to have had it's story nicked from "Silence In The Library" episode: group of people brought together in one place, they must keep out of the shadows, River Song, Data Ghosting similarities, etc.