A Measure Response

It's that time of year again, the time when Terry Brooks publishes his latest novel. This year, it's the second and concluding volume of the Legends of Shannara series, The Measure of the Magic. This two-part series is part of a larger work (begun in Genesis of Shannara), connecting a near-future Earth apocalypse with the world of his classic Shannara books.

When I commented on the first book of this pair, Bearers of the Black Staff, I noted that it made too much use of existing Terry Brooks tropes, but did manage to twist them enough in places that my overall impression was good. This second book is absolutely in keeping with the first.

In terms of his plotting and character development, Brooks is breaking absolutely no new ground in this book. Characters continue to be stock types he's used in past series. The plot largely follows a predictable course, weaving in many Brooks conventions. The writing is brisk and easy to read, but it isn't among Brooks' best compositions.

Still, the book did leave me satisfied overall, because Brooks did spice his meal with a few different elements. This may be the darkest pair of books he's ever written. The stakes are high; more characters die than in a usual Terry Brooks novel (and many of those deaths are more grisly than is typical for him). And then, in the final chapters, there are a few interesting surprises. They don't feel out of place, but I wasn't expecting them from a book that had otherwise followed an established formula.

I suppose it might sound like I'm damning the book with faint praise, but I really would rate it a B+ overall. It's just that Terry Brooks is passing into a different category for me. Once, he was probably my favorite writer. I still think he does what he does very well. But I also have started to look on his annual releases as a sort of "comfort food," not expecting as much as I used to from them (and not really getting it, either). If you've liked his other books, I'm certain you'll like this one. If you aren't a fan already, I'd recommend starting elsewhere for your first Terry Brooks experience (with either Ilse Witch or The Scions of Shannara).

The Origin of the Apes

For a long time, the original 1968 version of Planet of the Apes has been on my "To See" list. It never could quite make it to the top, because I always felt like there might not really be much for me to see there. The premise is well known, and the ending even more so. And I've seen maybe a hundred people impersonating Charleton Heston's near-Earth-orbit acting, serving up his half-dozen famous lines.

But then, pushing back against all that was the recent release of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The new film made me feel like I really should check out the original, particularly when I noticed a few references to the original in it (and had to assume that there were others).

The movie certainly has its share of camp... but no more so than you find in other science fiction stories of the late 1960s. Do these astronauts really believe they've landed on another planet where an entirely different species happens to speak and write English? Do we the audience, once the revelation comes, really believe that an intelligent ape society has sprung up in just 2000 years? Don't ask such questions; just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Admittedly, the ride is pretty enjoyable. Yes, the laughs are unintentional when Heston is beating his fists on the beach or screaming about the "madhouse," but the intentional jokes land the way they should. Ah, monkey humor. I do wish that this ape society would have reacted more realistically to the revelation of a talking human, but that's probably asking for a level of realism that just wasn't in the consciousness of a 1960s science fiction writer. Not a writer for film or television, anyway.

What you do get is some wonderful acting from the various people playing the apes -- particularly from Roddy McDowall and Kim Hunter. These actors all have the challenge of working through mostly intractable makeup, but through their fantastic efforts, none of this is half as hokey as it surely could have been. In fact, the least believable character in the movie is Heston's, the astronaut Taylor. Put simply, the guy is a huge jerk. Unbelievably so. He needles and belittles his fellow astronauts every waking moment until he loses his voice. And don't think that experience humbles him in any way, because he's even more arrogant and belligerent in the final act of the film.

The movie makes wonderful use of location shooting. The first act was filmed at Lake Powell in Utah, near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and in parts of California. The final act takes place in a great cliff setting overlooking a beach somewhere on the California coast. Epic, sweeping photography of all these locations must have done wonders for the tourism industry at the time; it all looks gorgeous. I'm not much of an outdoors person, and I'd totally love to go there and see these places for myself.

Also great is the musical score by Jerry Goldsmith. It's a bit bombastic for todays standards, but in the style of those classic Star Trek action cues that are just fun to listen to even today. Savage drums, screaming horns -- a fitting soundscape for a movie filled with apes.

It's not quite right to say that the movie "holds up" now, over 40 years later, because it really is dated in production values, acting style, writing style... you name it. But even with the metaphorical wires showing, the movie is still fun to watch over 40 years later. Overall, I rate it a B-. Not one of my favorite "classics," but a good measure better than most, in my view.

1derful

My favorite of director David Fincher's films is Seven. (Or, as it's officially styled, Se7en -- is that pronounced "Sesevenen?") But in the crucible of Top 100 Movie list-making, I recently decided to revisit the film. Just how much do I like it? Crime dramas so saturate television these days, you might think it would be harder to enjoy a movie like Seven. But I actually found that the morass only made it more clear how Seven rises above the norm.

Of course, Seven is a much more grittier, more gruesome tale than any you'll find on TV. I'm not just talking the network likes of CSI, NCIS, or Law & Order; it outpaces cable and pay cable fare too. But it's not just violent -- that would not be notable in and of itself. It's that the idea of the killer in Seven is horrible beyond most anything else that has been dramatized anywhere. The murders he commits are clever, elaborate, poetic, and demonic. It's a potent concoction that simultaneously draws you in and repulses you.

The film is also relentlessly bleak. Bleak in tone, bleak in look. Screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker was apparently venting some frustrations about the time he lived in New York; director David Fincher was full of frustration from his disastrous experience working on Alien 3. It all came together in a film that visually looks drained; very moody and weary. And to be clear, I love this stark and depressing look, so appropriate for the material.

The acting in the movie is great. Morgan Freeman played this kind of "anchor in the chaos" character in many other films (and many of those great films), but that doesn't diminish his presence here. I would have loved to watch a weekly cop show based on his character, Detective Somerset. Brad Pitt is also strong as Detective Mills. He gives an understated performance at times, but it's just what the movie needs. He needs to be enough of a hothead to make the ending of the film work, but had he acted relentlessly belligerent for the duration, you'd question how he functioned as a detective for so long, why Somerset ever befriends him, why his wife had remained with him... or any number of things. The fact that the performance is more carefully modulated than that makes the whole thing work.

Gwyneth Paltrow's part is rather small, even smaller I think than I'd remembered, but she has to achieve a lot with her limited screen time, again to make the whole film pay off correctly. Solid work. And in other small roles, Richard Roundtree and R. Lee Ermey fill out the authenticity of this dark world. Also popping up, there's John C. McGinley (before Scrubs would completely change your image of him) and Michael Massee (playing his patented brand of slimeball). And a true M.V.P. in the cast is Leland Orser, the actor tasked with playing the man forced to carry out the grizzly Lust killing. To give a performance that amped up, with any kind of realism? A scary thought. And then to do it for director David Fincher, notorious for dozens, even hundreds, of takes? I can't fathom giving that performance that many times.

But, of course, the real man of the hour is Kevin Spacey as John Doe. His character is a perfect, calculating monster. He really only appears in the final act, but in his few scenes he perfectly nails calm and fury, intellect and madness... even humor. ("I didn't do that.") He's a great actor, and this is one of his career best.

Not everyone can stomach this film, I suppose, but for those who can, I think it's a top notch, grade A experience.

George Lucas' (Re)Vision

We're just a few weeks away from the release of the Star Wars films on Blu-ray. I had decided months ago that I would not be buying them, when it was confirmed these would not be the original versions of the films. Now that we're close to the release, it's coming to light that they're not going to be the special editions, either. George Lucas has decided to go in and tinker with the films yet again.

This news has sparked off a fresh round of condemnation from Star Wars fans. Most of the entertainment news sites I visit regularly have run their own version of a story about it; here is one.

Yes, Lucas has decided to take the stupidest moment of Episode III (of the entire six-film series, possibly), a moment widely mocked by fans and emphatically dissed by me at the time, and "bookend" Vader's story by echoing it at the climax of Return of the Jedi. I can understand why a man who worships at the altar of Joseph Campbell thinks this change is a good idea, but no thank you. But then, I wasn't buying the Blu-rays anyway.

But rather than focus on any specific change here, I want to talk about the notion of the changes as a whole. There are some (not many, but some) who defend Lucas' right to change the movies as much as he pleases, since they're his creation. And it seems that many fans are willing to concede that point, so long as they're given the option to buy either the original, unaltered films, or the latest Lucas edit.

This new batch of changes has given rise to a splinter opinion -- that Lucas should be free to change Episodes I-IV as he wishes, but should keep his hands off Episodes V and VI, which were helmed by other directors. He may tinker with his own creative product, they argue, but should leave the work of others alone.

Personally, I disagree on all of this. I think George Lucas should leave his filthy hands off the movies, period. And my reasoning comes in the form of a question: what sort of art form do we think movie-making is?

Authors don't routinely go back and re-write their published work. Sure, there are examples of successful writers publishing "unedited editions" of books they were forced to cut down early in their careers, but they aren't actually writing and changing the material after the fact -- they're simply revealing the original vision. Countless writers who have had their novels adapted by Hollywood have remarked on cases where they saw improvement on the source material. George R. R. Martin made such comments about certain scenes in the first season of Game of Thrones; Charlaine Harris has professed her love for characters on True Blood she didn't invent herself in her novels; the list could go on and on. But that's just the way it is with writing novels. You don't get a "do-over."

You know what does get revised after release? Video games. They get patched as a matter of course. I do believe video games are an art form too (of course I do; I'm in the industry), but consider what a video game patch does. It fixes bugs. When it's revising gameplay, it's usually because the gameplay was bad the first time around.

So, Mr. Lucas -- do you think you're making a video game? And are you trying to tell the world that you think you made a bad game that needs to be "patched?"

Of course, with the rise of e-books, we're reaching a point where writers could conceivably patch their books if they wanted to. But I really think you have to ask if this is a case where technology allows people to do things we shouldn't do. You could make the argument that this use of technology isn't destroying civilization; it's not an atomic bomb or anything. But to whatever extent you believe that a civilization is the sum of its art, then I'd argue that retroactively changing art like this is destroying civilization -- an incremental death of a thousand cuts.

Movies are products of their time, warts and all. The good ones are praised because they hold up over time in spite of the flaws, not because they were without flaws. And as this is my primary argument, it applies even to someone who thinks that every change George Lucas has made to the Star Wars films has been an actual improvement.

Not that such a person actually exists. At this point, I believe the best thing that could happen to Star Wars would be the death of George Lucas. The creation needs to be saved from its creator.

Law Review

I missed The Lincoln Lawyer during its run in theaters earlier this year, but recently caught up with it on Netflix. I'd heard some decent reviews for it, and yet was still only expecting so much. It's sort of hard to expect too much from a legal movie, I think. Legal TV series can rely on established characters as the means to tell more unusual stories about unusual cases. Movies have only two hours to set up characters and tell their story, and that story has often been homogenized by the Hollywood studio system.

You might ask then, why bother at all? Well for one, there have been a few great legal films over the years. But in this case (pun not intended), there were some interesting actors in the mix too. I'm not talking about the lead, Matthew McConaughey, or even the major secondary characters played by Marisa Tomei and Ryan Phillippe -- though they all do a fine job. I was more interested in the veteran actors populating the fringes of the story, people like William H. Macy, John Leguizamo, Bob Gunton, Frances Fisher, and Bryan Cranston. Aside from Macy, none really has a significant role in the movie, but they certainly help build a credible and compelling world for this story to unfold in.

The case itself does manage to be interesting, though -- an oily, slick mess worthy of the oily, slick lawyer who is the film's protagonist. I think I'm not giving too much of the game away (though feel free to skip the rest of this paragraph) to say that the defendant in this story turns out to be a bad, bad man. Admittedly, a smarmy lawyer forced to find his own moral compass isn't an original story, but it's one told far less often than other Hollywood legal tropes.

The movie runs along well for a time, and the strength of the cast keeps it afloat even longer. But a less used cliché is still a cliché -- ultimately, you know exactly how this movie is going to end, and I found myself starting to lose interest before it got there. I grade it a B overall. It's good enough entertainment for a Netflix evening, and probably even as good as an average episode of whatever law TV show might be your drug of choice. Probably not as good as a good episode of said show.

It's Time to Get Things Started

The Muppets are slowly having a resurgence in popularity right now. The parody trailers for their upcoming movie have had good buzz around them, and now, last week, comes a cool new album -- Muppets: The Green Album. It's a dozen classic Muppets songs, re-recorded by a variety of current artists.

The results are a bit hit-and-miss, though more hit than miss. The album kicks off with OK Go's rendition of the "Muppet Show Theme Song." (It being OK Go, there is of course a YouTube video to go with it.) It's a bit quirky and strange sounding, but that's the band's style. And it does work for this song.

The hits keep coming in the next few tracks. Weezer is joined by Hayley Williams (of Paramore) for "Rainbow Connection." That's always been one of my very favorite Muppets songs, and it's fantastic here, sweet and emotional. Then there's Denver-based rock group The Fray, serving up the always-fun "Mahna Mahna." Their version is quite authentic to the Muppets' original, but I don't think I'd have it any other way.

Things slide downhill through the middle of the album. Part of it is obscure song choice. Unless you're a fan of Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas, you probably don't know "Our World," and My Morning Jacket doesn't do anything to give you a strong opinion of it. Amy Lee (of Evanescence) does a version of "Halfway Down the Stairs" that absolutely ruins the sentimentality of the original; her vocals are alright, but the weird techno-esque soundscape of the cover does. Not. Fit. And later there's "Night Life," by Brandon Saller (from Atreyu) and Billy Martin (from Good Charlotte). I never cared much for this disco-y song from The Great Muppet Caper, and hearing it hard-rocked-up here doesn't make me like it any better.

But then there are more great tracks near the end of the album. Andrew Bird's version of "Bein' Green" is solid -- no Kermit (or even Ray Charles), but still well worth listening to. And Matt Nathanson does a fun take on "I Hope That Somethin' Better Comes Along," from The Muppet Movie.

I just wish the album didn't end on a sour note. "I'm Going To Go Back There Someday" is the last track, a brilliant song from The Muppet Movie that's simultaneously mournful and hopeful. Gonzo sings it in the movie, and it's an unexpectedly powerful scene. The puppeteer behind (under?) Gonzo, Dave Goelz, sang it at Jim Henson's memorial service to even more powerful effect. But on The Green Album, Rachael Yamagata performs the song, and basically substitutes raspy, breathy singing for emotion. It's almost an insult to the original.

Still, the good tracks on the album are very good, and should find a spot in any Muppet fan's MP3 collection. Cherry-pick the album for an A-; buy the whole thing for a B-.

I'm Afraid It Wasn't Great

This weekend, I went to see the new horror film Don't Be Afraid of the Dark. There were two big draws here:

First, it's written in part by Guillermo del Toro, the writer-director of the very good film, Pan's Labyrinth. That movie is full of unsettling and creepy images and scenes; it seemed to me that if the same man turned his attention to creating a true horror movie (as opposed to a film with horrific elements), the results could be excellent.

Second, it's a remake of a well-regarded 1973 made-for-TV movie of the same title. I've never seen the original. I had to look it up and read a synopsis (after seeing this remake) to learn how closely the new film followed the original. (Answer: sort of.) But many people (including del Toro) talk of how profoundly scary they found this old movie to be. I figure if scares that intense were achieved on a TV budget in the early 1970s, there had to be an excellent core to the tale that could be the germ of a successful remake.

In this incarnation, a dating couple (on a likely path to marriage) has undertaken the restoration of a centuries-old mansion. The man's daughter from a previous marriage comes to live with them, and discovers a previously unknown basement. Tantalizing whispers from a locked up fireplace grate entice the girl to open up a shaft into a dark subterranean pit. Now free, the creatures from below are trying to claim the girl for their own.

Overall, the movie was a disappointment, failing to live up to the (possibly unfair) expectations I'd had for it. It wasn't a total loss, though. The little girl, Bailee Madison, is an excellent young actress. Her character really is the protagonist of the film, and she is its true star (despite the presence of Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce). Other horror films have included children and put them in jeopardy, but offhand, I really can't think of another example of a horror movie where the child really is the main character like this. (Even The Sixth Sense really shares main character status between a child and an adult; and that movie is arguably not horror in the sense that this movie is.) In any case, this choice works completely, thanks to the casting of a great young actress.

The first chunk of the film is effectively scary. While the menace was mostly left to the imagination, coming across just as evil laughter and raspy whispers, it definitely made my hair stand up. But ultimately, we get to see more. (And hey, minor spoiler alert on the rest of this paragraph if you want to bug out.) These eight-inch tall demons have a creepy character design to them, and the movie does show them doing serious damage... yet it's just hard to ever take an army of Lilliputians as a serious threat, no matter how evil they look. The whispers were far more scary.

In fact, to make this evil seem credible, the script has to make the characters quite dumb to fall into their clutches. While it's true that nearly every horror movie has an obligatory "seriously, you're doing that?!" moment, this movie is built almost entirely from them. What starts out scaring you ends up making you constantly ask, "these are your choices in this situation? Wow, really?"

In short, it starts out with promise and then flies right off the rails. I'd call it average overall, though the solid performance of Bailee Madison inclines me to nudge it a bit up the scale. I'd rate it a C+. A horror aficionado might indulge the urge to check it out (now, or later on DVD), but others need not apply.

Sense-ational

The Sixth Sense was in the upper echelons of my Top 100 Movie list when I first made it many years ago. Since then, it's become fashionable to crap all over M. Night Shyamalan. Alright, I give you that The Happening was pretty lame. But it seems to me like some people are pretending they never liked Shyamalan's movies just because his first major one was so damn good.

It was good, right? The level of Shyamalan venom these days has almost made me wonder. So I decided to watch The Sixth Sense again and judge for myself.

I will admit that a lot of my instant love of the film came from the circumstances under which I first saw it back in 1999. I knew absolutely nothing about it. I was in San Diego to work Comic Con, and one night after the dealer room had closed, one of our volunteers found out that none of us had seen The Sixth Sense yet. I can't remember if it had opened the weekend before and we'd missed it being on the road somewhere else, or if it had opened the night before, and he was so affected that he could talk of little else. Either way, his message was clear: "drop everything, we're going to see The Sixth Sense." "But didn't you just see it?" "I'll go again! Right now!" It seemed impossible that a movie could live up to that kind of hype.

But it did. And then I understood why this volunteer had been so keen to get others to the movie, and so eager to see it himself for a second time. When I returned home from Comic Con just a few days later, I rushed out to watch it for myself for a second time. And perhaps more importantly, to see how others reacted to seeing it for the first time.

No one today could ever have that kind of experience seeing The Sixth Sense for the first time. Everybody knows the subject matter, the famous "I see dead people" line, the fact that there's a twist ending. Most people probably even know what the twist is before they see the film -- it's achieved an "I am your father"/"Who is Keyser Söze?" level of status in the collective consciousness. And this can only diminish the impact of seeing the movie. Fortunately, the movie works on multiple levels. It keeps on giving.

The first time I saw it, I was wowed largely because I was fooled. Most people were. I know like one person who really did guess the ending, but let's be honest -- very few of the people who claim to have done so really did.

The second time I saw it, I was wowed largely because I saw how I was fooled the first time. The movie "plays fair" at every turn. Every important scene has dual interpretations, one that supports the truth, and one that supports the mislead. It's such a carefully constructed piece of writing, I enjoyed it the second time just as much as the first, enjoying the craftsmanship.

Today, all that trickery is gone. (Although I maintain that it never felt like a trick to me.) And now I find the movie just as enjoyable on a third level -- as perfectly executed horror and emotional drama. The story of young Cole Sear is truly harrowing. This young boy has been tormented every day, from birth, by horrifying specters that assault him emotionally and physically. He has no one to confide in or help him cope; the few times he's tried to communicate his plight, he's just ended up more ostracized and worse off. And he's suffering through all this at what, age 10? 12? If you have a nurturing bone anywhere in your body, your heart goes out to him.

Meanwhile, you have his poor mother, frayed to the last of her wits. She's struggling as a single parent, working two jobs to make ends meet. She would do anything for her son. But something is clearly troubling him and he won't tell her. She can't help. And then at one point, she's even suspected of causing the trauma in his life. Again, you'd have to be heartless not to sympathize.

This is the true backbone of The Sixth Sense. And it works thanks to the phenomenal performances given by these two actors, Haley Joel Osment and Toni Collette. Yes, M. Night Shymalan crafted an impeccable script, but his greatest triumph with this movie was finding and casting the child actor that could make it all work. Maybe the only child actor. And the whole movie works because this relationship between mother and son works.

These two actors achieve something so incredible that it's easy to overlook other amazing performances in the movie. Olivia Williams has the toughest job in the movie, playing Malcolm's wife Anna. She has to play a truth in every scene that the movie is trying to hide from the audience. The performance has to be honest and not give the game away. And it does. She seems a stone-cold bitch the first time through the film, and a suffering tragedy every time after.

Donnie Wahlberg. Holy crap! Utterly unrecognizable in this role, and another triumph for Shyamalan in finding and casting him. Sure, today, he's known as an actor -- and if you've seen his work, you know he's a good one. But at the time, he was a former New Kid on the Block, and nothing more. He delivers such an intense performance, in just a couple minutes of screen time, it's unbelievable. Traumatized, petrified, damaged -- again, a performance that would be the highlight of any other movie that is just one of many great performances here.

And then there's Bruce Willis. He's the star of the film, so it's perhaps weird to say that it's easy to overlook him in the movie. Yet his work is so reserved, so subtle, and so razor precise, that's the truth of it. It's no surprise to me that Shyamalan would go right back to him and cast him again for his next film.

To make a long story short (too late), this movie was no flash in the pan, no fluke. It's still one of my very favorites, an unreserved A.

Concluding My Musical Trek

Today, I conclude my series of reviews on the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection -- Volume One. The third and final disc of the set presents the efforts of three composers who each worked on only one episode of the series. The scores for their episodes are presented in their entirety.

First up is Fred Steiner. This long-time composer worked on the original Star Trek series, in fact creating most of the music for those classic episodes. When The Next Generation started up, one of the supervising producers was also a classic series veteran, and thought to bring in Steiner for regular composing work on the new series. Steiner's Next Generation work was very much in the style of those classic episodes, and thus did not mesh at all with Rick Berman's "wallpaper" mentality. Steiner was never offered another episode after his first.

But that one episode of music is a treat. That was "Code of Honor," in which negotiations with a backward world go sour when Tasha has to fight the wife of the sultan-esque leader. Admittedly, this is one of the cheesiest episodes in a first season with more than its share of cheesy episodes. But the thing is, "Code of Honor" really felt like it could have been an episode of the original Star Trek, and so how fitting that it had music that sounded like that series too. The music is loud and bombastic. Every cue ends with a crazy, trilling musical sting. Every action cue has ascending horn crescendos. But the thing is, it's all just fun to listen to. If it weren't for the quality of the recording, you might not know it wasn't written in the 1960s. Okay, so nothing here will stick in your head like the classic "Star Trek battle music" that any Trekker could probably hum from memory. Still, the score for this episode is the highlight of the entire 3-disc collection. I grade it a B+.

Don Davis is up next. Today, he's best known for providing the music for The Matrix trilogy -- a really solid score, in my book. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, he seems to have been a struggling up-and-comer, brought in to score "Face of the Enemy," in which Troi is kidnapped and surgically altered to appear as a Romulan for the purpose of escorting defectors out of Romulan space.

Sadly, the most flattering thing I can say about this score is that if you really strain to hear it, you can hear hints of The Matrix score playing in the horn section. I mean, you either have to know that film's score up and down, or have just listened to it, but it is there. Sort of. Occasionally. For the most part, it's just vanilla texture of the kind Rick Berman surely asked for. The Romulans don't even really get a discernable theme amidst the muddy strings and absent percussion. It's a grade D+ score, I'd say, one I'll seldom listen to.

Lastly, there's John Debney, who after one episode of The Next Generation would work on Deep Space Nine and then go on to film scores. He's not on the composers A-List today, but he works steadily. His score for "The Pegasus" is featured on this collection, from the episode in which Riker's old commanding officer comes to the Enterprise with a top secret mission to locate the wreck of their lost ship.

I'm not really familiar with Debney's film work, so I don't have a base for comparison. I can only say that unfortunately, his score for The Next Generation is like those of Dennis McCarthy and Don Davis. Bland, to a degree where you question why the producers bothered commissioning original music every episode when they could have easily tracked the same music across multiple episodes and no one would ever have known the difference. It's not actively bad music, just uninteresting outside of the episode for which it was created. Grade D.

So, now that you've waded through three days of Star Trek music posts, we're back to my original synopsis -- this collection is one just for the Trek enthusiasts and music completists. There are highlights that are very enjoyable, especially the Fred Steiner music. Overall, though, the collection rates a C+.

Break On Through

I recently watched The Doors, the Oliver Stone film about... well, The Doors. Of course, it's actually more about lead singer Jim Morrison. And when you get down to it, it's really about watching Val Kilmer portray the man. At least, that's the vague consensus I'd always heard about this movie -- Kilmer's the best part.

I didn't come to the movie as a massive fan of the band. There are several songs by The Doors I like quite a bit. Others I find too long-winded. (I'm not much for 4-minute instrumentatal bridges that free the singer up to slip backstage and get high.) Most of their music probably falls between those two extremes.

But whatever I think of The Doors music, I certainly find it more engaging than this movie. I just didn't find it to have much going on to set it apart from other artist biography movies; it pulled from the same bag of tricks that all these movies reach from -- behold the tortured, misunderstood, genius, self-destructive artist. If you've seen Pollock, or Nowhere Boy, or anything along those lines, you've basically seen this movie. This version comes with more drug trips.

It's true, though -- Val Kilmer does give a very good performance in this movie. As I'm not a major afficiando of the band, I can't speak to how credible an "impression" of Jim Morrison it seems, but it is a deeply committed, strong performance. He's a real standout in a cast that includes Meg Ryan, Kyle MacLachlan, Kevin Dillon, and Kathleen Quinlan -- though this is in part due to those other parts being fairly underwritten to focus on the force of nature that was Jim Morrison.

I'd be curious to hear the opinion of someone who is more a fan of the band. I could see them appreciating the material more, and yet simultaneously being put off by the rather negative portrayal of Morrison. There are moments it feels like it's going beyond a "warts and all" portrayal, to reach a literally larger-than-life place; was he really this big an ass?

One performance alone is rarely enough to make me like a movie, and this movie is no exception. I rate The Doors a D.

Jay Gets a D

Today I'm moving on to disc two of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection -- Volume 1. If you missed my write-up of the first disc, here's what the heck I'm talking about.

Disc two of the set features music by Jay Chattaway. He was originally brought on to the series for one episode, "Tin Man," filling in on an occasion when Ron Jones had asked for time off. Sadly, this was probably the final nail in the coffin for Ron Jones' relationship with Star Trek, because I gather the producers liked what they heard. Partway through the next season, they brought Jay Chattaway on full time.

Some of the best Jay Chattaway music (including that "Tin Man" score) has appeared on previously released soundtrack albums, leaving slimmer pickings for this compilation. In fact, Chattaway manages to out-McCarthy Dennis McCarthy here. The Chattaway material on this disc is largely shapeless and bland, with one episode not even distinguishable from another. A real disappointment.

But there are a few good moments if you sift through the disc. The album begins with music from "Remember Me," and as it was only Chattaway's second contribution to the show, he hadn't quite fallen into the norm. There's a nice, punchy cue used for the climax of the episode.

There are a few tracks from the episode "Darmok," including some interesting tribal overtones in the scene where Picard and the alien captain swap stories. (Similar instrumentation peppers a cue from "Journey's End.")

Some interesting tracks come from "The Inner Light," one of the series' best episodes. The memorable, melancholy flute melody is presented in its entirety. There's also a fun, vaguely Rennaissance Festival-esque track used to score the alien village.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album ranges from bland to disappointing. You won't be able to tell the difference between the vanilla music for the episodes "The Host," "I Borg," and "The Chase."

Two other scores just represent missed opportunities. "Relics" brought the character of Scotty onto The Next Generation, but the musical samples here barely use the iconic, classic Trek theme. (I imagine this was at Rick Berman's bone-headed request.) Then there's "Starship Mine," an episode conceived of as "Picard stars in Die Hard." I wistfully wonder at the kick-butt score Ron Jones might have delivered as I listen to the drab Chattaway music that could have fit any episode.

Regrettably, I found the Jay Chattaway material to be the biggest disappointment in this collection. Maybe that's in part because the Dennis McCarthy material delivered a bit above my expectations. In any case, this disc is a grade D+ snooze.

Gat-about

My favorite science fiction movie (unless you count Back to the Future -- and I don't consider it to be primarily sci-fi) is Gattaca. I didn't need to watch it again to confirm that. But as soon as I mentioned FlickChart, the film started cropping up a lot. More than one of my friends told me about difficult match-ups involving Gattaca and some other movie. In each given scenario, it was an easy choice for me: Gattaca all the way.

Still, talking so much about the film made me want to watch it again. So I did.

Here's the short synopsis, in case you haven't seen it. (But if you haven't, go do so. Now!) In a not-too-distant future, genetic engineering has become the rule of society. Parents with money select any number of advantages to be engineered into their child from birth, and all of society has become a rigid class system favoring the genetically superior. The main character of the story is a man of natural birth, denied his dreams in life because of his genetic code. So he conspires with a genetically superior man who became confined to a wheelchair after an accident; by stealing the other's DNA and masquerading as another person, he'll have the chance to pursue his dream of voyaging into space.

I think that in a way, Gattaca has a lot in common with Pleasantville. Pleasantville is a story about about denying the potential within yourself. Gattaca is a story about other people denying that potential. A different side of the same coin, but I feel it makes for an equally compelling movie. And the fact that the protagonist's dream is to become an astronaut is icing on the cake for a space enthusiast like me. (And seems somehow even more poignant today, in this post-Space Shuttle world.)

The visual design of a movie is very strong, especially for a movie made on a limited budget. It presents a spartan future that seems loosely inspired by what the 1950s thought the future would be like. Sets are cavernous and sterile, yet have interesting accents to catch the eye. One particularly nice touch is the spiral staircase in the protagonist's home that looks like a DNA double helix.

The strong vision and strong script is then realized with strong actors. Ethan Hawke is excellent as the "de-gene-erate" with inferior DNA. Jude Law is the crippled specimen that Hawke becomes, playing a fun and wonderful character arc even though the story is mostly focused elsewhere. Uma Thurman's role in the story is primarily as a love interest, though she too brings depth to her role that expands the film. The cast is rounded out with more great actors, including Alan Arkin, Tony Shalhoub, Xander Berkeley, and Dean Norris. And there's Ernest Borgnine too, in a small, fun role.

Gattaca is a full meal -- a feast for the eyes, and food for thought as well. A grade A film in the true, thought-provoking sci-fi mold.

Dennis the Unmenacing

Late last year, I wrote about the perfect intersection for Star Trek fan and score enthusiast, The Ron Jones Project -- a 14-disc box set compiling all of that composer's fantastic work for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Now, La-La Land records has decided they too will help expand the library of music from that series by releasing Star Trek: The Next Generation Collection -- Volume One. It's a set of music from five other composers who worked on the show. Though its "mere" 3 discs pales in comparison to the epic Ron Jones collection, it's still a great sample of work from throughout the seven-year run of the show.

And frankly, a sample is the better way to go, in this case. As a musical score fan, I can tell you that the thing that made Ron Jones' work on Star Trek so phenomenal is that he really wouldn't "play ball" with what the producers wanted. Rick Berman, the producer at the top, literally (and famously, in music fan circles) said that the music of the show should be like "wallpaper," never calling attention to itself and shapelessly filling in the silence. It's a wonder Ron Jones survived for nearly half the series' run, flying in the face of that philosophy with almost every episode he worked on.

As I said, this collection features some work from other composers. The first disc is devoted to Dennis McCarthy, who wrote more music for Star Trek (across TNG and all the later spin-offs) than anyone else. Disc two is the work of Jay Chattaway, the man who would ultimately replace Ron Jones after he was let go. Disc three covers three other composers who each worked on a single episode, filling in for various reasons for the two regular composers.

I picked up this 3-disc set because I'm a huge Star Trek and music fan, even knowing not to expect as much from it as I did the Ron Jones set. But I had reason for hope due to the nature of the compilation. Unlike the Ron Jones set, which featured complete episode scores (all of them), this set included both a few complete scores and some single tracks from other episodes. I figured that somewhere in seven years of the show, there had to be a few tracks that violated the "wallpaper edict," and I assumed those would be curated for this release.

Indeed, that's what happened. But the results were still mixed overall. I'm going to jump to the end here and tell you that unless you are a Star Trek fan, and a real music nut, you probably won't want to buy this set. I'd grade it a C+ overall, which might -- might -- be good enough to recommend a single-disc CD, but the $35 price tag for the three discs is probably steep enough that only the real soundtrack fans should spring for it.

That said, I'd like to explain what you do get in this collection in more detail, and I feel the best way to do that is to break my review into three parts, one per disc. So if you love film and television music, I suppose you're in for a treat! If you don't, brace yourself for two more days in the near future where my blog probably won't interest you much.

First up, Dennis McCarthy. As I said, he wrote more Star Trek music than anybody, and he didn't achieve that by breaking the rules. He's by far the composer I like the least on Star Trek. I can't blame him for putting his head down and doing a job, but his music is rarely anything you'd want to listen to outside of the show itself. Fortunately, this album does highlight the rare exceptions.

The complete score to his first episode, "Haven," leads off the album. Not a very great hour for the show, but a pretty solid suite of music. Listening to it, I realize that Dennis McCarthy probably has it in him to be a composer I would enjoy; this music clearly comes from an early exploratory period before he started toeing the line. His work here has richer orchestration, more dramatic spikes, and several playful embellishments suiting the comedic aspects of the episode. (Well, the parts that were supposed to be funny, anyway.) He even makes use of a recurring theme that I've read was intended for the character of Jean-Luc Picard. It pops up one or two other times on the disc, appearing in early episodes before it was dropped at the producer's request.

There's a single track from the climax of "Hide & Q" that's really solid. It's the sequence where Riker, bestowed with the powers of a Q, tries to give gifts to please his crewmates. The track starts with religious liturgical parody (with Q's entrance), has some tender emotion for the gift of Geordi's sight, and even some fun and primal material for Worf's potential mate. Again, this was early in the show, before McCarthy "learned" not to include such flourishes.

The highlight of the Dennis McCarthy disc is a 7-minute suite from the late first season episode "Conspiracy," in which body-snatcher-esque crayfish possess members of Starfleet Command and try to take over the galaxy. It was a truly out-of-character episode for the show, marked by rather unbelievable gore for 80s television, and an atmosphere of darkness and mistrust you'd never see again on Star Trek until Deep Space Nine found its legs. Whatever rules McCarthy had been following, he rightly dumped them to deliver an unusual score fitting the unusual episode. It's dark and sinister, fun to listen to, and I wish the composer had done more work like this.

The rest of the McCarthy disc is pretty dry. Even hand-selecting tracks from dozens of episodes, the CD producers couldn't really find enough truly interesting McCarthy material to fill a disc. There's a nice bump in the road for the episode "Elementary, Dear Data," a jaunty little theme he composed for the Sherlock Holmes adventure on the holodeck. Other than that, it's just a real snooze. I remain amazed (not in a good way) at how McCarthy is able to write action music cues that don't have a sense of action at all. There's a suite from the episode "Time Squared" that sounds like his work on the film Star Trek: Generations -- exactly the sort of uninteresting "wallpaper" Rick Berman asked for.

I'd call this disc a C+. There are a couple of B+, as-good-as-Dennis-McCarthy-gets tracks you can cherry pick for your shuffle play, but mostly it's music to fall asleep to. Not the reason why I sprang for the collection -- that'll come soon when I continue my review of this collection.

Best Worst Movie 2: The Trollening

If you read my write-up on Best Worst Movie, you must surely be asking yourself, "so... did you actually watch Troll 2?"

<Balki> Well of course I did, don't be ridiculous! </Balki>

I mentioned in discussing Best Worst Movie that Troll 2 doesn't feature a single troll. Here's what it does feature. A family of four takes a vacation to the tiny farm town of Nilbog, trailed by the older sister's immature boyfriend and his three stupid friends. The young boy of the family is haunted by visions of his dead grandfather, come to warn him that the residents of the town are all goblins in disguise. The goblins wants you to eat some of their food, which will magically convert you into a strange green pudding that they in turn will eat. (They can't just eat you directly, silly -- they're vegetarians!)

It's every bit as stupid as it sounds and more. It has preposterous and unearned plot developments. The characters seem to be competing in a "who can behave most stupidly" competition -- and it's a dead heat. It's all backed by a truly lame synth soundtrack. By any measure, this is a grade F film.

The theory goes, of course, that it's so bad it's good (SoBIG). Indeed, sometimes it is. But for me, comparing it to The Room, it isn't as consistently SoBIG. The movie is more often unintentionally stupid rather than unintentionally funny. And not all of the actors are cringe-inducing; a few of them really are trying to be good.

However, I must acknowledge that while this movie may not deliver the goods (bads?) consistently, there is one scene in it that is the indisputable SoBIG champion -- the most hysterically awful, awfully hysterical thing ever committed to film. It involves a witch seducing a dumb jock with an ear of corn. I'm not kidding. It's unfathomable that anyone involved with the movie could ever have thought for one moment that this scene would be anything but a laugh riot. Even if everyone was insane enough to believe in it on the page, I can't imagine that on the set, as they were throwing buckets of popcorn on the actors, that nobody stopped for a moment to ask "what the hell are we doing?" Or that the editor, when he was layering in the "You Can Leave Your Hat On" sound-alike, didn't have a moment of clarity and suggest maybe this didn't belong in the movie.

But don't take my word for it. Watch for yourself:



This is the highlight of Troll 2. If you're into bad movies, you'd probably enjoy watching the rest. But in any case, The Room remains king of its ignominious hill in my book.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

Once I'd seen The Room, Netflix had become aware that I was willing to watch notoriously bad movies. Netflix has also been plying me suggestions for documentaries. Put those two things together, and you get an interesting recommendation: Best Worst Movie.

Have you ever heard of Troll 2? I hadn't. Made in 1990, it's another movie "lauded" in some circles as the worst movie ever made. Certainly, it sports a dazzling pedigree. It's rated 0% at Rotten Tomatoes. It ranks in the bottom 100 at IMdB; in fact, before people latched onto it as "hilariously bad," it was in fact the worst rated movie there.

The protagonist of Troll 2 is a young boy of around 12. And now, as an adult, the actor who portrayed him decided to make a documentary film about it. And it stirs up a surprising variety of thoughts in just 90 minutes.

Literally, the first five minutes of the film takes place in a dentist's office. I wondered briefly if Netflix had sent me the wrong disc. Then I began to resent the filmmaker's slow burn to the obvious reveal: this dentist of today was an actor two decades ago, featured in Troll 2. So not the best note to start the film on.

But things turned around quickly. This dentist, who portrayed the father of the family, along with the young boy now grown and making this film, both came across as likeable people. And they "got it." As they take you around the country to fan screenings of Troll 2, they have no illusions. "Yes, our movie was terrible," is their message. "But it makes people laugh now, and that's great with us."

You learn about the strange pedigree of the film. It has nothing at all to do with Troll, the movie you would think was its predecessor. In fact, there isn't even a single troll in Troll 2. It was made by an Italian director, Italian writer, and Italian editor -- all certain they knew what life was like in America circa 1989. One fan of Troll 2 describes the result quite wonderfully in the documentary: it's as though aliens from another planet saw a human film, and then tried to make one of their own.

The documentary takes you through this modern day cult reaction to the movie, and you see that it can have a very positive impact. We meet another actor from the movie, who was an actual mental patient at the time, and today is recovered, yet still not fully settled with himself. When he goes to a Troll 2 screening and receives rapturous applause from hundreds of adoring fans, it's clearly a positive force in his life.

Then you get another side to the tale, as the documentary turns to those Italian filmmakers I mentioned. It's culture shock in pure form: they clearly think they made a good movie, one they still stand behind. The director himself basically says, "if you don't get it, screw you" -- and part of the movie seems to be his journey toward a new attitude: "maybe you're laughing when I didn't mean it, but I still made you feel something, and that's good enough for me as a director."

After that, the movie took me on a guilt trip. We meet the woman who played the mother of the family, and she seems like a complete loon. She seems like she might currently be a mental patient, and she looks like she's been through the skin stretching procedures in Brazil. And she thinks that her movie holds up today along Casablanca. She thinks it's timeless, filled with wonderful performances, and has a deep message about the importance of family. "Wow!" you the viewer delight, "This is hysterical!"

Except then you follow the dentist as he goes on a tour to some science fiction and horror conventions, and discovers that outside of these fan screenings of Troll 2, no one knows who the hell he is. And it clearly gets to him, and it's sad. You're made to realize that he really does wish, deep down, that he could have been an actor, and that this Troll 2 cult following was a wave he was riding to recapture lost youth. When it was the crazy skin lady with the delusion, you were laughing. Now it's this poor dentist you really liked. Not so funny now, is it? Shame on you.

Or wait a minute! Not shame on you, shame on the director -- this punk kid of Troll 2 now turned punk director of Best Worst Movie. He's totally exploiting his fellow actors! And yet, they all agreed to be exploited. Oh hell, what am I supposed to feel watching this documentary?!

So, a pretty impressive array of thoughts and feelings for one breezy documentary about a horrible movie. And make no mistake -- Troll 2 looks absolutely dreadful. As for Best Worst Movie, though, I think I'd rate it a B. It's a film with shades of Trekkies, and yet also something truly distinct.

Revisiting Paradise

Early last year, I wrote about two unsettling documentary films, Paradise Lost and its sequel. The films dealt with the murder of three young boys in an Arkansas town, and the three teenage boys convicted of their murders, dubbed the "West Memphis Three." The documentaries paint a compelling and chilling picture of a gross miscarriage of justice. It seems abundantly clear that the wrong people were convicted for the crime, and on prejudicial and circumstancial evidence.

The documentary filmmakers have been at work on a third installment in the series, to debut at a film festival this later, and then run on HBO starting next January. As of today, they have a new ending for their film. The West Memphis Three have been released from prison.

Though it seems the right thing was finally done, it's hard to look on this as anything like justice being served. For one thing, the lives of these three are still irrevocably ruined. True, not as awfully and finally as the lives of the three victims, but they nevertheless have spent half their lives in prison. And they're not even truly vindicated now. The legal technicality on which they've been released is not an exoneration. As I understand it, their "Alford plea" requires them to plead guilty and take credit for time served, even as they simultaneously maintain their innocence. They've done nothing wrong, but had to accept the penalties of saying they did in order to go free.

Even if they had been exonerated, they'd still be unlikely to ever settle into anything like a normal life. The moniker "West Memphis Three" will follow them forever, brandly them falsely as killers. On news sites such as CNN, that ran stories about their release, the comments threads were dominated by people ignorant of the facts of the case, who likened this situation to the recent Casey Anthony saga, lamenting "still more people getting away with murder." (And they weren't talking about the actual killer in this case, who remains at large and unconfirmed -- and probably always will be.)

I'll close by recommending one more time to check out at least the first of the two Paradise Lost documentaries. Before, watching it was sure to just leave you with an unfulfilled sense of outrage. Now at least there is some rough semblance of a happy ending in the matter.

Pin Down

Until recently, I'd never seen the movie Kingpin. This may be hard to believe, since there was a time there when it seemed like Comedy Central was playing it three times a week, every week for a year and a half. It's been in my Netflix queue for a while too, never bubbling to the top.

After a lunch time conversation, a co-worker decided that Kingpin needed to line jump. He brought in his copy of the DVD for me to watch. As the DVD sat there on my desk at work, and then later on my counter at home, it prompted an interesting array of comments. Some people told me they thought the movie was really funny, and they were sure I would enjoy it. Others thought the movie was pretty terrible, and that I should just give it right back and not waste my time.

My opinion fell somewhere between the extremes. If I was expecting another raucous, funny Farrelly Brothers film to rival There's Something About Mary, I didn't get it. But if I was expecting to sit there for just under two hours in stony silence, I didn't get that either. And yet, it might be that the best thing to come of this film is that it's where Woody Harrelson met Bill Murray, which would pay off a decade later in the most awesomely funny part of the awesomely funny Zombieland.

Bill Murray is definitely the best thing about this movie, and since his character bookends the film, the middle chunk really starts to drag. Woody Harrelson is at his funniest when he's playing a more eccentric character (see Cheers, Zombieland, etc.), but here he's really the straight man to the not-as-funny Randy Quaid. It's not that Quaid is bad. He's just not as funny as I imagine other actors would have been, even Woody Harrelson, had he been cast in the other role.

It's not a bad comedy, all told. It's just disappointingly average for featuring some talented actors. I rate it a C+.

Embrace the Dark

In 1999, The Matrix came along and blew the minds of a legion of movie-goers. But a small slice of them, like me, were somewhat less impressed -- just one year earlier, we'd seen Dark City.

Both movies follow a protagonist with a growing awareness that the world he lives in isn't real. Both are aided by a wise outsider with the ability to infuse the hero with vast knowledge in an instant. Both are pursued by ominous forces fighting to maintain the status quo. Both develop the ability to manipulate their false reality. Okay, so The Matrix has kung fu, wire stunts, and "bullet time" -- and I'm not saying that isn't neat. But basically everything else The Matrix has, Dark City had better. And first.

I recently watched Dark City again, part of my Top 100 Movies project, and found that my enthusiasm for the film hasn't waned in the slightest. But I do recognize today that that enthusiasm is somewhat unlikely. I don't particularly like the film noir genre. I've trashed several film noir movies here on my blog. Make no mistake; Dark City may be a sci-fi film, but it is equally (and maybe in greater part) a film noir.

Style is the centerpiece of the movie, permeating its every aspect. The tone is bleak. The color saturation is dark. The sun never shines in Dark City. The costumes are austere.

The character design of the adversaries, the Strangers, deserves special mention. Every element of them is perfectly ghoulish, from their gaunt and pale frames, to their evil black outfits, to their unsettling manner of speech ("...yes?"), to their odd names, to their wicked teeth chattering. Off-hand, I can't think of a movie villain I've ever found more chilling. I mean, Darth Vader scared the crap out of me when I was five years old, but if I'd seen one of these guys at that age? Scarred for life.

The actors playing the Strangers may steal the show, but the main cast is great too. Rufus Sewell is a compelling hero, even in a low-key performance. Jennifer Connelly is the perfect femme fatale for the genre. William Hurt plays the detective role with palpable exhaustion. And Kiefer Sutherland... well, I won't lie, I'm still not quite sure what's going on with his strange... breathless... speech. But it's the very definition of what actors call a "bold choice," and it somehow totally works in the context of the movie.

Remove the awesome stylized trappings, and I can't pretend that there's much to the story beyond a typical "hero's journey." But in 90 short minutes, the movie takes you on that journey perfectly, and even finds moments to reflect on the nature of the human soul. What makes a person who they are?

The finishing touch is a stellar, wall-to-wall musical score by Trevor Jones. Aside from a few night club scenes featuring "source cues," I believe that every last second of the film is scored. The music never fails to heighten suspense, accelerate action, amplify unsettling moments, and generally magnify every sensation the movie invokes. It's a feast for the ears to match the feast for the eyes.

Dark City remains high on my list, an absolute A.

Ape Soundscape

In my recent review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I neglected to mention the musical score composed by Patrick Doyle. Let me correct that oversight now by saying that it was another wonderful element in an enjoyable movie. In fact, I recently picked up the soundtrack album myself, and it's in heavy rotation on my iPod.

Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes re-make was a big disappointment, but the one truly great element of it was Danny Elfman's amazing score. The work Patrick Doyle has done on this new film feels stylistically connected with Elfman's work -- and even in occasional moments, with the original film's score by Jerry Goldsmith.

It's a loud, in-your-face score. Noisy brass. Frenetic strings. And of course, the percussion. The more action oriented the cue gets, the more the percussion pours it on. It starts right from the beginning of the album -- literally in "The Beginning," the first track, and continues over the first several cues.

The soundtrack does slow down a bit through some of the early tracks, representing the more quiet and emotional chunk of the movie. On film, this music supported the sentiment wonderfully; on the album, it's not quite as strong without the visual support. Listening to it straight through can lull you into a bit too sedate a mood; but if you play the album on shuffle, it's easier to appreciate any one of these slower songs mixed in with the more driving action cues.

And the deeper you get into the album, the more that material comes. It begins with a slow burn in a number of great, suspenseful pieces that slowly builds the tension. One track is an especially great example of this, despite its goofy name, "Cookies." (If you've seen the film, you'll recall the scene.)

As the story barrels on into act three, the music goes pedal to the metal. An ominous choir with eerie synthesized processing arrives in "Caesar's Stand," and then the percussion drives up to maximum for two pivotal (and lengthy) action cues, "Zoo Breakout" and "Golden Gate Bridge."

If you're a fan of movie soundtracks, this is one to make sure to add to your collection. It's one of my favorites to come around in a while; I'd rate it an A-.

Unlocking the Forbidden

Though my last attempt to view a so-called "classic sci-fi film" ended miserably, I decided to roll the dice on another one. More people would probably consider this one a classic anyway: Forbidden Planet.

I found two aspects of the film to have the most impact. First was the visual effects. This movie was made in 1956, yet has effects that would have still been impressive 30 years down the road. Yes, the spaceship is shaped like a flying saucer and looks super cheesy in a way that tells you exactly when the movie actually was made, in the same way that shag carpeting tells you a room was furnished in the 1970s. But the quality of effects is pretty amazing if you can overlook the content of those effects.

The other aspect is the performance of Leslie Nielsen as the commander of the spaceship. I am aware that Nielsen was a well-regarded serious actor before the 1980s arrived and he became better known for deadpan humor. And yet I'd never seen it myself in action. It's truly an amazing thing to behold. I kept expecting him to make a joke. Really, his behavior in this movie was not that different from his behavior in a movie like The Naked Gun -- it's all a matter of context.

But as far as the overall quality of the movie? Meh. It's not terrible, but neither is it great. I wouldn't put it on any "best movie" lists, though I certainly would put it high on a "most influential" movies list. This movie clearly inspired a lot of science fiction that would follow, particularly the Star Trek television series. In fact, the whole film plays like an average episode of the original series -- no "Amok Time" or "The Doomsday Machine," but neither a "Spock's Brain."

I'd call it a C-, all told. Probably something sci-fi fans should see to better "know their roots." But it's certainly not anything to show a non-sci-fi fan. They won't get it. (Even if it is based on Shakespeare.)