Shmee.Me

April 17, 2013April 17, 2013

Star Trek Looks for The Undiscovered Country

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country came out in 1991, and is that last film featuring the complete original crew. The sixth film was going to be a reboot of the franchise, but fans and the original cast wouldn’t let them. Though as we know they would reboot the series with the 11th film.

The movie starts off with the crew of the USS Excelsior led by Captain Sulu being caught in an energy wave caused by the Klingon moon Praxis exploding. This moon was the Klingon’s number one energy source. With this information the crew of the soon to be decommissioned USS Enterprise are called into a top secret meeting and are told by Spock that the Klingons can no longer afford the cold war they have been having with the Federation, and need to create a lasting peace, so the Enterprise is sent out to guide a Klingon ship to Earth for peace hearings, and as you can guess things don’t go as planned.

After the disaster that was Star Trek V, this movie was an excellent way to send off the original cast. It has a very Star Trek story about the galaxy becoming a better place through peace, and they get to show the audience something new: like the Klingon Home World, and a prison mining camp, and Kirk gets to be Kirk by fighting aliens and making out with alien ladies, so kudos to Leonard Nimoy for coming up with this story.

They had all sorts of fun with the casting by working Worf (Michael Dorn) and Christian Slater in to the movie, and one of the greatest Star Trek villains of all time Christopher Plumber as General Chang. He like Khan loves to quote Shakespeare and blow stuff up. It is wonderful. I can only hope that they have Benedict Cumberbatch quoting Shakespeare in the new movie because that is what good Star Trek villains do.

For some reason I thought William Shatner directed this movie, but he did not. Thankfully the director was Nicholas Meyer who also directed Wrath of Khan, and helped write The Voyage Home, so if you are thinking he was involved in all the good early Star Trek movies, you would be right, and it is a shame they didn’t just get him to do them all.

This is one of the few truly good Star Trek movies that is also just a good movie period. If you want to watch a good movie with the original cast, watch this movie or Wrath of Khan, and I am sure you will have a good time.

April 15, 2013September 9, 2013

Did Argo Deserve Best Picture?

Argo is a Ben Affleck directed film from 2012 based on the Iran hostage crises in the late 70’s and early 80’s, but not about the hostages at the embassy, but the six that escaped. The film won best picture in 2012, but did it deserve it? Probably.

The film starts off explaining the political situation in Iran (crappy), and then moves to the Iranian militants invading the US embassy. During the turmoil six people escape and hold up at the Canadian ambassador’s house. Soon US officials learn of the escaped six and start to come up with plans to get them out of the country, but the best bad plan they can come up with is to create a fake movie, and scout Iran as possible location and use the six embassy workers as the scouting crew.

The way Affleck blends the movie with old stock footage makes this movie seem like real life, and since it is based of true events it kind of is. There have been outcries from Canada, and the escapees themselves because the movie minimizes Canada’s role in the rescue, and the last pulse pounding scenes of the movie are exaggerated to say the least.

The acting in this movie is excellent, with the best parts going to John Goodman and Alan Alkin as the Hollywood producers as of this fake film. I am sure that since they have been in the industry so long it was fun for them to play old industry insiders playing Hollywood for suckers by planning a film that was never going to happen, and they add a sense of fun to an otherwise tense picture.

This movie was exciting to watch, and I think everyone involved did a great job. I would love to see an actual documentary of what really happened with these six people stuck in a hostile land.

April 12, 2013

MST3K Explores The Violent Years

The Violent Years is a movie from 1956, and it was written by the infamous Ed Wood, and like all things Ed Wood the crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is here to make fun of it.

The plot is pretty simple, four well to do girls have parents that don’t spend time with them, so they get bored and start committing crimes like theft, rape, murder, and high school class room destruction on the behest of the communists. Because as we all know communists hate high school.

MST3K had a hay day with this film. The acting is wooden, they use the same footage over and over, and Ed Wood’s script escalates the violence these girls are willing commit amazingly fast. This fact contributes to my belief that Ed Wood was really a genius, he knew that he could not be one of the greats, so why not be remembered as the worst. It is one of the those special bad movies where the jokes pretty much write themselves, but like pretty much any MST3K movie, your enjoyment factor depends a lot on your mood or your company

This movie like a lot of the MST3K films is streaming on Amazon Prime, so if you are looking for a funny way to kill an hour and half, then this is a great option, and it is always fun to take a moment and remember just how bad Ed Wood really was.

April 11, 2013April 11, 2013

Can’t get a Better Neighbor then Totoro

My Neighbor Totoro is film directed by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki. It came out in 1988 in its native Japan, but did not make its way to the US until 2004, and then it was rereleased by Disney in 2006 with a new voice over.

The story follows two young girls (Elle and Dakota Fanning) and their father (Tim Daly) as they move in to a new house in the country so they can be close to their sick mother (Lea Salonga). The girls soon meet some new friends that just happen to be forest spirits. The largest being Totoro.

Hayao Miyazaki once again proves that he is a master of his craft. The only negative thing I can say about this movie is that the plot is amazingly simple, and since the girls are mostly just reacting to the world around them it would be hard to call them protagonists, but it is so cute, and lovingly made that those are just minor gripes, and what kids really control what happens to them anyway.

I love pretty much every movie Hayao Miyazaki has ever done, and even then this is one of his better films. If you want to watch something incredibly cute then this movie is for you.

April 10, 2013April 10, 2013

Almost Star Trek’s Final Frontier

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was made in 1989, 20 years after the end of the TV show. It was so bad that it almost ended the Star Trek franchise. This movie was directed by Captain Kirk himself William Shatner. Shatner got a chance to redeem himself by directing the next movie.

The movie starts off on Nimbus III (think Tatooine). A giant dirt hole that is supposed to be the planet of peace where The Klingons, The Federation, and The Romulans are supposed to work together to build the world, but of course they don’t and everyone just fights a lot. A man named Sybok kidnaps the ambassadors from the three governments, and unless a ship is sent he will kill them. Of course they send the Enterprise to help them. Then Sybok steals the Enterprise and is off to the great barrier at the center of the galaxy to find God.

This movie has all sorts of problems: The plot is bad, the special effects are bad, the acting is bad, and the directing isn’t great. They really just should have scrapped this one and called it a day

I am glad that in this movie they decided to go out and explore something, but it is so anticlimactic when they get there. They build up the great barrier as some sort of impenetrable wall that nothing can get through, and then they just fly through it without any problem, and it is not just because the Enterprise is awesome because a Klingon Bird of Pray does the same thing like two minutes later. Oh yeah there are Klingons in this movie for some reason, don’t worry they are pointless so you can forget about them.

This movie was the low point for the series for awhile, but sadly it gets worse in a few films. If you haven’t guessed it by now, you should skip this movie. Luckily the next movie isn’t that bad, so there is hope.