Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies: #9 - Star Trek: Insurrection

Next on our Trek-tacular (trademark) countdown is the second-worst Star Trek movie in my opinion and the absolute worst that's come out of the Next Generation camp. Star Trek: Insurrection is the ninth of the original ten movies and by the late 90s, you couldn't look anywhere without seeing Star Trek. It was in the theaters as well as on TV with not one, but two concurrent hit shows airing, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. With this one, Star Trek: Insurrection, the storytellers thought about taking a lot of their own ideas, both from early production meetings for this movie as well as ideas for The Next Generation TV series that they had established, and just totally undoing or rewriting everything while also incorporating pseudo-political agendas and nonchalant historical references to major American events that caused great heartache and tragedy.

The movie starts, oddly enough, on an alien planet within what the Federation labels "The Briar Patch". Here, we see the Federation in coordination with a race of alien beings known as the "Son'a". Together with the Son'a, the Federation monitors the village of beings on the planet known as the B'aku. The B'aku are the envy of those involved because their planet has rejuvenation radiation that allows the inhabitants to practically live forever. Their cells regenerate and stay young at well above the ability of an average human's, causing many inhabitants to live for a thousand years. On this installation is our trusty goof-bot, Data. He malfunctions, going apeshit with a hand phaser and exposing the Federation-Son'a installation. When Data's schematics are requested by Admiral Dougherty (Anthony Zerbe), Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) ignores his orders to remain away and investigates the matter himself, moving to capture Data before the Federation can seize him. Working with Admiral Dougherty are members of the Son'a, including one played surprisingly enough by F. Murray Abraham, of all people. You know... Salieri from Amadeus. That guy.

During the crew's visit to the Briar Patch planet of the B'aku, they each begin to experience the rejuvenating effects of the planet's rings. Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton) has his ocular implants removed as his eyes heal themselves, while Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Deanne Troi (Marina Sirtis) rekindle their love relationship. It is during this time that Picard confronts Admiral Dougherty about a cloaked Federation vessel they discover with a holodeck used to recreate the village, and Dougherty confirms that top Federation officials are working with the Son'a regime to forcibly and deceptively remove the B'aku from the planet and relocate them to a different planet, allowing the decrepit Son'a to inhabit their planet and use its rejuvenation abilities to heal their race, but poison the planet in the process. Picard throws a fit and decides to warn the Federation, informing them of Admiral Dougherty's intention to violate the Prime Directive, the Federation's number one law that no one must break. Ever.

So right now you're probably getting quite a "Trail of Tears" vibe, aren't you? Well, if you are, you're not the only one. Which is weird because there's at least two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the whole "forced relocation" of a race of beings was made perfectly fine and even justified to allow the survival of millions of people, so it's a little strange that the Federation, Picard mainly, would disallow this sort of forced relocation. He did it twice already in the original show, so why does not work here? Oh, is it because he's in love with one of the B'aku villagers? Perhaps it is! Way to think with your prick, Picard. No wonder this time around this story doesn't make any sense. On top of that, let's discuss the B'aku. I failed to mention thus far that the reason that the B'aku receive their regenerative abilities from their planet is because they have opted to reject the use of advanced technology in their lives, in order to simply them. As they say "We believe when you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from that man". Even though they have advanced irrigation and farming systems that surely cut down on the amount of manpower needed to operate their farms. So something is amiss there. I think the B'aku are just stuck up, ignorant jackasses that gloat, rant and rave simply because their planet keeps them alive and sustains them while the S'ona, we come to find out, are formerly B'aku villagers that chose to embrace advanced technology in their lives and utilize it on a daily basis. Hence why the planet does not sustain them and their appearance is that of a mummy, with folded skin flaps and surgically reconstructed faces in an attempt to remain and appear young. WOAH! Mind blown. Okay, not really, but you know. On top of all that, the B'aku are shown to have sort of superhuman abilities when the lead woman, Anij is shown to be able to freeze a waterfall and a dandelion blowing away. When Picard asks her how she can do this, she replies "No more questions". See? Guess you don't get to know anyway. Kind ridiculous for a woman who not an hour ago you found out couldn't even fucking swim.

So to assist the B'aku from being abducted and removed by the Son'a and Admiral Dougherty, Picard, Worf, Data and Crusher escort the B'aku villagers away so that the Son'a ship cannot remove them. During this ordeal, which literally even borrows from pictures of the "Trail of Tears" incident in American history in showcasing the forced relocation of the B'aku people (yikes), F. Murray Son'a-ham demands that the crooked Admiral Dougherty allow the Son'a to dispatch to starships to attack and destroy the Enterprise. A short but fierce space battle takes place where Riker eventually does-in the Son'a ships by operating the entire USS Enterprise-E with a fucking joystick from the bridge. I'm not talking a large command console that happens to have a joystick on it, or a joystick with a lot of buttons and technical readouts; NO a fucking two-button'd joystick you're used to seeing used for an Atari 2600. This powers and operates a large Federation space battle cruiser and destroys two S'ona ships.

Eventually, Picard masterminds a ruse to transport F. Murray Abraham and his bridge crew to the secret Federation holoship and shutdown the harvester. Abraham discovers the deception and transports to the radiation harvester ship to manually restart it. Picard comes in hot pursuit and sets the harvester to self-destruct, which kills Abraham just as Picard is rescued by the Enterprise-E. The remaining Son'a are forgiven and welcomed back by the Ba'ku as Picard and the Enterprise crew take a moment to enjoy their rejuvenated selves before returning to their previous mission.

Star Trek: Insurrection tells an interesting enough story, yes, but it feels moreso like an episode of the show that could've ran for two or three parts rather than a feature motion picture. It drags at times, has some conflicting anecdotes that negate things we were taught in The Next Generation, and tackles way too big of a political agenda with the whole "forced relocation of a species of people" thing. The acting can get a little hokey, some of the dialogue doesn't make any sense, character elements are totally baffling when they're compared to the surroundings in which they live, and on top of it all, the whole movie just feels a little recycled. Granted the idea is an interesting one, but not when you have to borrow from the Next Generation TV series. I like the Son'a as villains, the Briar Patch battle is decent if it didn't end with a freakin' joystick, and Anthony Zerbe is pretty great as Admiral Dougherty. There's a lot of holes, it leaves a lot of questions, doesn't explain a whole lot, and negates a lot of pre-established material. Watch it at your own risk.

Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies: #10 - Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Now, hold the phone. Wait a minute. Stop the presses. Hold the mayonnaise. I believe Star Trek is the first major motion picture franchise that ever existed or that has ever existed where the first dang picture in the franchise is the worst? Is it true? Am I just shitting? No, I'm not. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is probably the single greatest folly Star Trek ever partook in, and this includes Star Trek Discovery.

At the time of its pre-production, Star Wars as tearing theater competition apart and winning Oscars, pretty much making it the biggest film of the time at that time. Paramount Pictures did not want their big-screen Star Trek debut to be seen as "cashing in", so they most likely decreed to director Robert Wise to not make the film feel similar to Star Wars in any way, shape or form. Unfortunately, it bit them in the ass. Star Trek: The Motion Picture is not fun, exciting, thrilling, enthralling or even remotely fast-paced. It's often referred to as "The Slow-Motion Picture" because of the lack of action, events, cuts, or even scenery changes for much of the movie. It's basically like if speed regulations mandated that Space Mountain couldn't go any more than five miles an hour. Sure, you'd finish the ride, but it's going to feel like you're in there an eternity. But honestly, the movie is just over two hours in length, and there are no ship-battles, ship-to-ship confrontations; there are cool spaceship shots, though. They just go on forever and ever with seldom cuts to relieve the lack of fluid motion in an otherwise interesting story narrative.

What is this narrative that carries this stiff-motion tortoise through its journey? There is a quite large alien force descending toward Earth and the crew of the newly refit USS Enterprise are dispatched to stop it. Seems like your typical episode of the original show. The original cast even returns, looking mildly older and pudgier than we remember them from the series finale ten years prior: Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Lt. Hikaru Sulu (George Takei), Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig), Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery Scott "Scotty" (James Doohan) and Lt. Nyota Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). They're joined by two new crew members, Capt. Willard Decker (Stephen Collins) and Ilia (Persis Khambatta). FUN FACT: Movie trivia for Star Trek: The Motion Picture says that Ilia is "Deltan", meaning she comes from the Delta quadrant...I guess. What's funny about that? Well, her race is supposedly incredibly toxic with pheromones and mating hormones, meaning she can make anyone super horny and ready to boink just by looking at her. Supposedly, humans can't survive one round of sexual intercourse with a Deltan. Random tangent, I know, but...weird.

So Decker is in charge of the newly refit USS Enterprise until Kirk comes aboard and usurps him for no reason, other than "I'm the star and it's in my contact." After Kirk takes over commanding an almost totally different Enterprise than the one he commanded in the show, he kills two people in a matter of two minutes. This'll average out to about a death a minute if we keep going at this rate. The Vulcan replacement for Spock is fried in a transporter malfunction, along with a new officer beaming on board with him. Soon after the launch of the Enterprise to intercept the anomaly, an off-balance warp-whatever causes the ship to enter a wormhole. This slows time down, a cool distortion affect that causes laughably delivered slow dialogue. Kirk tries to do something with the phasers to clear an asteroid out of their path to save the ship, but former Captain Decker belays the order to save the ship, later explaining that whatever caused the warp drive mishap rendered the phasers useless for some reason. So that means that just after taking command of the mission, Kirk's killed two people and endangered the entire ship once already. Fun stuff.

The slow pace of the entire movie causes the illusion that the dialogue scenes don't go anywhere. There's important things being discussed in most scenes, but because it feels like that that's all going on, it just feels slow. The Enterprise eventually meets up with and picks up Spock, who was on Vulcan getting his remaining emotions wiped out so that he can become 100% pure Vulcan (I guess). I don't know, isn't this the third time he's tried to have all remaining emotions purged? I feel like that's a regular occurrence. I'm no Trekkie after all, so I guess that's my lack of Trek knowledge poking through. Eventually, the crew comes across the entity, and after a painfully slow process of entering its confines and trying to find the center of the anomaly, called "V'Ger", Ilia is captured as the entity boards the ship and takes her away. She later reappears as V'Ger itself, a probe using Ilia's body as a recreated mechanism to "observe and record the carbon-based units". She demands to know the secret of V'Ger's creation, but Kirk only promises to give the secret to the center of V'Ger herself. With that, the Ilia probe allows the USS Enterprise to the center of V'Ger. Inside the center of V'Ger, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Decker find that V'Ger is actually Voyager 6, the old drone sent into deep space by Earth many years ago, returning to Earth to find its creator. The machines upgraded the probe to fulfill its mission, and on its journey the probe gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness. Spock realizes that V'Ger lacks the ability to give itself a focus other than its original mission; having learned what it could on its journey home, it finds its existence empty and without purpose. Before transmitting all its information, V'Ger insists that the Creator come in person to finish the sequence. Realizing that the machine wants to merge with its creator, Decker offers himself to V'Ger. As Decker merges with V'Ger, the trio escapes back to the Enterprise and leaves as V'Ger, Decker and Ilia probe merge together to create a new form of life that disappears into another dimension. Kirk and the others then direct Enterprise back toward Earth for her next adventures.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is an abysmal start to an otherwise legendary movie franchise. The Motion Picture fails across the board. This movie tried to capitalize on the success of one of the biggest science-fiction/fantasy films of all time in Star Wars and ended up mimicking 2001: A Space Odyssey. The uniforms look cheap, the acting is dry, Shatner is at his Shatner-est with his deliveries and hammy acting, the dialogue scenes go on forever, the non-dialogue scenes go on forever, there's very little action and the action there is, you could blink and miss it. The special effects are pretty good, can't say they aren't. There's just a lot of time to enjoy the visual effects shots. The refit Enterprise is so cool because they give you a near four minute mundane scene of Kirk and Scotty boarding the ship to do final preparations. The movie's pacing is horrible. There are some scenes that are so soft and quietly spoken that you wonder if there was a mic issue in the shot. The movie is boring, mundane, slow, yes, but at least it tries to have a decent ending. The techno-babble that Star Trek is known for can be lost on the average viewer who drifts in and out on their smartphones while the movie is going on. To this average viewer that isn't a Trekkie, like myself, if anything steals your attention during crucial dialogue scenes, you're going to miss something important that won't make the movie make sense later, and because the movie is so long and drags out constantly, you're not going to feel like rewinding it to find out what you missed. Oddly enough, I say skip this one. Blow it off. Forget about it. There's nothing that doesn't happen that isn't important in later films. There's not a whole lot of story content, very little action, and many of its production and story elements are totally omitted from future installments. There's no mention of the V'Ger crisis ever again in the rest of the films. Skip this one and get started right with Star Trek II.

Coming Soon! - Ranking the "Star Trek" Movies

Aren't I just weird? I got burnt out doing my Top 30 favorite movies countdown, so I decided to review some random movies, then I got bored with that so I guess it's time to do another time-consuming ranking! I'm going to be a ranking genius after this. This'll be my third ranking of a franchise's movies that follow either one principal story or a principal character, the first being "Ranking the Batman Movies" and "Ranking the Halloween Movies", both in 2016. Now I give you, for the summer of 2018, "Ranking the Star Trek Movies". That's right, now I get to rub my nerddom all up in your faces. Unlike the Halloween movies, in my opinion the Star Trek films aren't quite split right down the middle of the original ten in terms of quality. There are more good ones (six) than bad ones (four), so at least there'll be some consistency.

Some ground rules first. Number one, first and foremost: My cutoff is going to be Star Trek: Nemesis. That's right, I'm leaving the rebootquels out of this. Why, I hear you cry? Well, because Top 13 isn't a very marketable (nor is it a lucky) number. Besides, those are the ones I've seen the least. Number two, I won't follow a set schedule. I set a schedule for Halloween so that I could get them all out in October and I about wanted to give up on the blog and find a new hobby. So now, it'll be business as usual "whenever I get around to it". You might give five in a week or two in a month. Who the hell knows.

So, that means our criteria for ranking is as follows. Star Trek made its big-screen debut in 1979 hot off the heels of Star Wars's success, with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Yes, that is the full title. Not Star Trek, not Star Trek I, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I guess Star Trek: The Movie sounded a little hokey, so it's "The Motion Picture". We'll get to it, but I'm going to tell you right now there's not very much "motion" in it.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was three years later in '82, and a serious improvement over the previous one. Often considered one of the best by Trekkies and non-Trekkies alike. It was also the start of a housed "trilogy" of films that followed one solid plot outline about a torpedo of life called "The Genesis Device". The second part is Star Trek III: The Search for Spock in '84 and the Genesis story concludes in '86 with Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. So far we're following a solid numbering outline, wouldn't you say? Then we have 1989's Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, our first standalone story since the first one. Like the first one, it's notorious for...reasons. That's all we'll say for now.

The original TV show cast gets a magnificent send-off with 1991's Star Trek VI; The Undiscovered Country. They're all noticeably old but it fits the movie and story well and has a fantastic send-off. The torch is the passed to the cast of the hit TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation which had just concluded on television. Hot off the heels of its conclusion is 1994's Star Trek Generations, the seventh film. Notice how the numbers quit coming? Now we're getting out of hand. Generations also was marketed as being the first Trek film to showcase a high-profile team-up of captains, namely Kirk and Picard, but we'll get into that later. The Next Generation cast returned for 1996's Star Trek: First Contact, the movie that made the Borg freaky scary. They probably would've been scarier in The Next Generation if they had a budget to not make them look like discount Halloween costumes. 1998 gave us the ninth of the original ten Trek films, Star Trek: Insurrection and the third to be based around the Next Generation crew. Unlike the original TV series cast, the Next Generation cast didn't get quite a good send-off with 2002's Star Trek Nemesis. For reasons we will very much get into once the ranking starts.

So that was just a preview, hope I already didn't spoil what order I'm going to put them in. Stay tuned...unless you're not a Trekkie and therefore don't give a shit. In which case, sorry.

A Review of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"

Okay, so when you make a sequel to a movie, chances are either the predecessor was really successful critically and financially (well...critical success doesn't mean dick anymore) or, if your franchise started post-2010, you had six sequels planned when you first popped the idea of making the first movie anyway. So, in the 1980s, what is with the idea of making every sequel much darker and grittier than the light-hearted first movie in the series? I get you want to make the characters go through some kind of peril and trial of suffering, much like The Empire Strikes Back, but there was one movie that got so much darker and screwed up than it should have and ever could have...Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A prequel that teaches that Indian folk are vile madmen with bizarre, fucked up religious beliefs, ripping people's hearts out of their chests and eating snakes and chilled monkey brains for desert. The movie was slammed for being repulsively unsettling, religiously insulting, racially misrepresenting and overall just an unpleasant experience. It's on Batman Returns level of cranking up the discomfort levels in all the wrong directions as a real "punch in the stomach viewing experience. Let's dive into this mixed bag of depressing, weird stuff and discuss it, shall we?

The movie starts off with a curveball right off the bat (no pun intended) with a woman performing a song "Anything Goes" for a group of Chinese gangsters. Weird, the other two Indiana Jones movies didn't opening with song numbers. Did Disney purchase Lucasfilm thirty years before they actually announced it? After that arguably catchy and enjoyable song is over, Indiana Jones himself appears and confronts Lao Che, a Chinese gangster who promised him a large diamond in exchange for the remains of Nurhachi, first emperor of the Manchu dynasty. It is during this meeting that Indy meets Willie Scott, the club singer for the nightspot "Club Obi-Wan" (wink, wink do ya get it? Wacka, wacka) in Shanghai. The deal goes south after Indy drinks poison and must trade back the diamond for the antidote. A shootout takes place that sees Indy and Willie escape into a car driven by Indy's young cohort, Short Round. The trio make their way to an airfield and escape on one of Lao Che's planes into the mountains of southern China. The plane is sabotaged and the trio are forced to escape into a river in remote India. There, they come across a village ravaged by the theft of their sacred Shankara stone, one of three. The village Shaman says that Shiva delivered Indiana Jones to the village to help them bring the stone back. Indiana, Willie and Short Round then venture to Pankot Palace to find the Shankara stone and return it and the children of the village, captured by an evil 'Thuggee' cult to be slaves and mine for the other two stones.

"I have here, the heart of that
guy at Apple who took away
your 3.5mm headphone
jack!"

Where the movie becomes absolutely uncomfortable and difficult to enjoy for people is when the group reaches Pankot Palace. Up until now, the movie has been very much like its highly popular and revered successor, Raiders of the Lost Ark, in terms of tone and adventure. Once they get to the palace, they're introduced to the Maharajah Zalim Singh and his prime minister, Chattar Lal, both of whom grow increasingly insulted by Indy's accusations that the palace is responsible for stealing the stone and the children of the village. That night, after someone attempts to take his life, Indiana and the others sneak into the catacombs of Pankot Palace and come across a Thuggee ceremony underground. What are "Thuggees" you might ask? Worshippers of Kali. Easy enough. In this satanic rhythmic Indian ritual, the high Thuggee priest Mola Ram finds a random slave and rips his heart out of his chest, sacrificing him to the goddess Kali before sending him into a fiery pit of molten material.

Good Christ alive. First of all, the scene is wicked intense with the chorus chanting and the John Williams score of beating drum seance music. Next, Mola Ram literally reaches into this poor guy's chest, pulls out his heart, and then cackles as it bursts into flames in the palm of his hand as the guy is lowered into his demise. I'll post the scene on YouTube down at the end of the post. You really have to see this to believe it. It may be completely tame considering what movies have shown us since then, but this is what followed Raiders. Holy jumping fucking shitballs. While that's weird, the movie gets even weird. Before this scene is the dinner scene with Chattar Lam and the Maharajah...which involves Indian kinsmen sitting with Willie and Short Round as they're served disgusting trays of food that are ordered up as "Indian delicacies". From slimy corn snakes inside the roasted body of a large cooked python, to a soup of bloody broth and eyeball chunks, to oyster-like beetle bodies with entrails you can just suck out...to chilled monkey heads with brains you can eat like ice cream. Seriously, look this shit up. This is all over the place. I mean...eww.

"Holy smokin' okie-dokin' french fried potaters
Doctah Jones! They're sacrificing Indian
people to Kali!" "Kid you come up
with one more Robin-esque expression
I'll have them sacrifice you next!"

Soon, Mola Ram and the Thuggees capture Indy, tie him and Short Round to rock columns and whip them, then force Indy to drink forbidden material that then possesses him as they attempt to sacrifice Willie to Kali next. Indy hits Short Round in the face...like full-on whacks a child in the jaw with his fist, just before Short Round burns him with a torch and snaps him out of it. Indy then breaks up the Thuggee ceremony before freeing Willie and Short Round and heading into the mines to free the slave children. A brutal fight takes place where Indiana must fight the giant Thuggee cultist hand-to-hand, much like his fight with the German mechanic in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Except this time, the Maharajah cursed Indy by stealing a bit of his shirt for a voodoo doll. A doll which the dark prince uses to torture him while he gets his ass kicked by the large Thuggee. Oh good, for a minute there I thought voodoo and torture were aspects we left out of this otherwise wholesome family film. Thankfully, Short Round snaps the little jerk out of it. Fun fact, the German mechanic and the large Thuggee cultist were played by the same man, Pat Roach. He was originally going to play another large German in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that Indy fights hand-to-hand, but the idea was scrapped. He also died before he could play the large Russian general in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so that idea was scrapped as well. After the Thuggee gets crushed in a rolling stone rock crusher, the trio escape the mines in a truly thrilling action sequence: an escape through the mine tunnels on a cart. Several other Thuggees jump in carts and chase them and the whole sequence inspired a ride at (I believe) Disneyland. I don't know if the ride's still in operation or not, the movie is thirty-four years old, but still a notable tidbit.

The movie climaxes (heh) in a sort-of iconic and well known scene. If you've ever seen a shot of Indiana Jones standing with a torn up safari shirt and a sword on a rope bridge, this is where that's from. He chops the bridge's ropes and sends many Thuggee cultists falling into the gator-ridden river below to be eaten, including Mola Ram. Indy, Willie and Short Round then return to the village and replace the Shankara stone and the stolen child slaves before heading off to their next adventure, an adventure that neither Willie nor Short Round will be a part of. Fun fact #2: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is often credited with being one of two movies (The other of which being Gremlins) that greenlit the creation of the "PG-13" MPAA movie rating. The movie was PG, but traumatized so many young kids who went to see it that the MPAA was like "Okay, no. We need a rating to keep young, fragile minds out." Imagine being an eight-year-old kid and seeing people eating monkey brains and ripping hearts out of each others' chests? Try watching Barney the Dinosaur after seeing that shit.

"Sorry Mola Ram... looks like you just brought a
bridge to a chasm fight!"

It's interesting to note that a large reason for the movie's foreboding atmosphere and demented plot elements is the fact that both George Lucas (story) and Steven Spielberg (director) were  going through divorces and neither of which were 'in a happy place' at the time. Many who have worked on the movie attribute its bizarre story, unsettling characters and misbehaving Indy on both mens' mentality at the time, especially Lucas who proposed many of the bizarre elements. You wonder where his balls went for the prequels, eh? Spielberg met his future wife Kate Capshaw, who plays Willie, on the set of this movie and George eventually lightened up in his own time producing movies like Howard the Duck and Labyrinth before Spielberg and he would reunite again in '89 for the much more light-hearted, well-received Raiders throwback Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade....but that's not to say you shouldn't count-out Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. A surprising number of people do. What I've found is that a lot of people have only seen Raiders, Crusade and Crystal Skull. More people have seen Crystal Skull then even care to see this movie. I remember a high school conversation when I was a freshman. That would be about the time Crystal Skull came out. People were like "Yeah, Raiders was good and Crusade was good" and another kid went "Wasn't there another one?" to which everyone in the room was kind of just confused at the notion that maybe they forgot one.

So take it how you like it. I like to give it a watch every now and then, but that's just me. It's pretty common that with the four, soon five, Indiana Jones movies, everyone's either going to pick Raiders of the Lost Ark or Last Crusade as their favorite, but everyone seems to refuse to bat an eye at this one. It's the forgotten, often over-looked or ill-received middle child. Temple of Doom is still a fun ride with some compelling action scenes. The Fight in the Mine, the Minecart Escape, the Bridge Showdown, the Shanghai Shootout. The "Indiana Jones" aspect of the movie doesn't fail. It's just the mood, tone, supporting characters, their behaviors and plot elements that really don't sit well with people. I mean, honestly, really think about it. As I said, this was before PG-13 (but this helped create it). This was when it was just NR, G, PG, R and X. So you had ten and twelve-year-olds going into this movie alone and they see shit like what's below. I get it, at our age we think its the fun-kind of fucked up. While it's true that an argument can be made that Temple of Doom is a fun movie and a decent entry in the franchise, it's nameless side characters get tossed aside pretty easily, Willie gets annoying in five minutes flat, Short Round does so in ten, the Shankara Stones aren't really all that great of a choice for "the treasure" and to top it all off, did I mention it's morbid tone and how fucked up it gets? Good.

A Review of "Cloverfield"

Where we're going, we don't need "Godzilla".

You ever just sit around and watch a movie, wondering why on Earth you picked that movie and not the other one you could've picked? You had Baby's Day Off in your hand and instead, you picked Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo instead? Okay, I don't know why I chose those two movies, but you get the idea.

Way back in 2008, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was in its infancy stages, Disney had yet to start whoring out Star Wars like a webcam girl for money, and the idea behind filmmaking original ideas was...okay, that was lost back then, too...but there were still some fun and exciting takes on old ideas back in 2008. The Dark Knight was destroying theater competition left and right, but a few of those 2008 movies still stick out in our minds. Like... Cloverfield. "What is Cloverfield?"you may ask yourself, obviously stuck under a rock. Cloverfield was a shaky-cam vomit-inducing horror movie with brilliant setup, entertaining enough characters and a fun location and "doomsday" esque setting that really set the tone for this sort of shaky-cam "found footage" type genre. Everybody knows the one that started the whole found-footage thing was The Blair Witch Project, with its less-than-minuscule budget and presentation using nothing more than a common household camcorder. But we aren't here to talk about The Blair Witch Project, even though I'd like to some day. We're here to talk about Cloverfield, the powerhouse shaky-cam monster movie.

You missed your train, sir

Set in modern day New York City, Cloverfield shows us the lives and times of several characters that intertwine through one night. First there's Rob and Beth; two best friends who spent a night together. Oopsie-daisy. Beth then gets upset because Rob apparently didn't call her after that. Rob's reasoning is that he's leaving to become the vice president of some company in Japan, and didn't wYant Beth to get attached. It is this promotion for Rob that is the center of his brother Jason, his best friend Hud, and Jason's girlfriend Lily's planned surprise going away party for him. The movie showcases the party quite a bit, with the ignorant and well-meaning Hud being tasked with video-taping the whole night. He meets Marlena, a friend of Lily's, someone who is immediately smitten with.

Things take a turn for the weird when an oil tanker capsizes out of nowhere in the Harbor. As everyone flocks to the TV to see it, more explosions take place. The group of partygoers run outside and into the streets, where the head of the Statue of Liberty is flung toward them in one of the most famous shots of the movie. Hud catches a glimpse of the creature on his camcorder and shows it to the others. Jason immediately surmises, sight unseen, that the creature was real and not some puff of rubble moving with the wind and decides to walk his friends and partygoers to the Brooklyn Bridge to get out of Manhattan. On the Bridge, the group and several others are stopped when Rob gets a call from Beth saying she can't move. Just then, a giant tail comes up from the Harbor waters and smashes the Bridge, killing Jason and several other New Yorkers. Rob and the others return to Manhattan and formulate a plan for getting out of the city. Rob says he won't leave without Beth, so the others regrettably follow Rob to Beth's apartment. Throughout their journey, the group gets caught in the crossfire of the US Military and "Clover", a mysterious monster large in scale and brutal in nature. Looking like some sort of extra-terrestrial life form.

Eventually, the group has to take refuge in the subway as the monster bears down on them and the US military. Instead of walking back up to the surface, Rob suggests they walk the train tunnels to another station to try and get closer to Beth's apartment that way. In the tunnel, the group is attacked by large arachnid creatures that fall off of the creature's back and body. Marlena is bitten and later explodes from the bite (literally EXPLODES) when the group finds a military installation inside a shopping mall. The troopers there tell them of the Hammerdown Protocol, where the US military will bomb the shit out of Manhattan trying to kill the monster. Hud, Rob and Lily then flee the installation and continue to Beth's apartment, where they find her pinned under debris. They remove it and make their way back to the helicopter take-off point. Lily is put on a chopper and flees before the next one takes Hud, Beth and Rob. The group witnesses a stealth bomber carpet bomb the monster, but the monster rises from the smoke cloud and knocks their helicopter down, crashing in Central Park. The group awakens at dawn and pull Rob from the downed chopper. Hud is then eaten alive by the monster in one of the coolest shots of the movie. Rob and Beth take the camera and make their way to Central Park where they give final testimonials to the camera, profess their love for one another as the Hammerdown Protocol destroys the bridge they're hiding under.

A gripe I have with the movie is that it is too short, but it's also a mixed gripe because what more could they have done? The movie is sub-90 minutes, barely even breaking 80 minutes. Once "Clover" comes along, the movie's pace expedites exponentially and all of a sudden you blink and the movie's over. The movie's subplot involves footage that the movie keeps cutting to, involving Rob and Beth's visit to Coney Island, which is what the movie ends showing. Rob and Beth get buried under the bridge rubble, then cut to Rob & Beth "having a good day" at Coney Island. 80-something minutes. Short, but ultimately satisfying.

"Quick! Pose for a candid photo amidst the chaos!"

The acting is what it is. I mean, they just had to douse the actors in sweat and tell them to act panicky and freak out about their surroundings and various other things. The dialogue is what aids the movie. The suspense of finding out what the monster attacking New York City is is pretty interesting as the characters are on a journey to figure out what they're up against. I enjoy it. Plus, I mean, Clover is a pretty interesting monster. Its design is quite unique and very different from monsters that have been done up to this point. According to its designer, it is the infant form of its species. Meaning despite its immense size, it is the smallest of its kind, meaning that its mother is huge, father's probably huge-r.

All in all, I enjoy Cloverfield. Its shaky, its short and its ultimately all-for-nothing since each of the main characters meet their end as we find out the tape is just being viewed by government agents, at least we assume that's how it's going. Still, the subplots are at least interesting enough and Clover the monster is awesome with every scene its in either being hectic and jaw-dropping or spine-tingling and suspenseful. Of course, in real life, a movie like Cloverfield should never happen. If you're busy running from a monster, put the fucking camera down and run from the monster. Still, decent movie. Check it out if you're in the mood for some popcorn entertainment. Won't take up much of your night.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #1 - Back to the Future

Holy schmoly, we've finally made it. Cody's numero uno favorite movie-o of all time. The single greatest piece of time travel storytelling that has ever come down the pike. No joke. I could watch this movie on a loop until the day I croak.

Back to the Future starts out in the year 1985. Marty McFly is a seventeen-year-old high school student who is, by all intents and purposes, a "slacker". He has a girlfriend named Jennifer Parker and a family who struggles to make ends meet while his father George is an awkward loser and his mother Lorraine is an alcoholic. His dad's coworker, Biff, is a narcissistic, petty bully still tormenting George even thirty years after high school. When Marty's best friend, the eccentric disgraced nuclear physicist "Doc" Emmett Brown calls him and asks him to come to the mall to document and showcase his new invention, Marty attends. There, he finds that Doc has invented a time machine, out of a DeLorean. As Doc is getting ready to travel twenty-five years into the future to 2010 (which is eight years in the past for us, *sobs*) Libyans that Doc stole plutonium from arrive and kill him for revenge. Marty escapes in the DeLorean, but accidentally travels back in time to 1955. Trapped in the past with the DeLorean's depleted plutonium supply, Marty searches for the 1955 Doc Brown to assist him getting the time machine back up and running. In the process, he accidentally alters his past and prevents his parents from meeting when he pushes his teenage father, George, out of the way of a car. Marty realizes if he doesn't get his parents together, he will cease to exist as a new timeline will materialize in which he will never be born.

It now becomes Marty's mission to 1) Restore his future by ensuring that George asks Lorraine to the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance at Hill Valley high school, which is "where they kiss and fall in love for the first time" and 2) Successfully repair the DeLorean and return to 1985 with Doc Brown's help. So, the entire movie becomes one giant adventure as Marty struggles with the awkward task of making his parents fall in love...because you know, we'd all probably struggle with that kind of monumentally awful task. I know I would. (Hi mom).


Back to the Future is a movie I want to spoil everything for you and yet spoil nothing at all at the same time. I don't want to spoil Marty's plan for getting his parents back together nor Doc's plan for getting Marty back to the future. There's scenes in the movie that are so iconic and ridiculously popular, you'll wonder how you haven't already seen this movie. Alan Silvestri's score with the familiar Back to the Future motif, Huey Lewis and the News's "The Power of Love", Marty at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance and the best climax in any motion picture anywhere (in my opinion) in the Race to the Future at the clock tower. If you haven't seen, stop what you're doing (even if you're driving) and watch this movie immediately. You'll love every moment of it. It's truly that good.

Cody's Top 30 Favorite Movies of All-Time: #2 - Star Wars

You knew this was either #1 or #2, didn't you? Don't you give me that look, you knew this was coming. I'll bet you could smell it a mile away, eh?

Star Wars I have beaten to death talking about in this blog. I've covered so many topics and yet for every one topic I've covered about it, there's at least fifty other topics I haven't even touched upon. The universe of Star Wars is too huge for any one man to encompass in a lifetime even, so its difficult for me to really peg down the entire saga and really discuss anything beyond just the movies with any sort of merit.

The first movie, though. I wrote an entire retrospective on it thinking it was going to kickstart a long, winding breakdown of the entire franchise and its releases and re-releases. So I've covered it in great detail. I don't think my opinions on it has changed. So if you'd like to read that, click here. I won't go ahead and beat a dead horse by writing another post about it. So consider this just a preface to the actual post, which you can read clicking on that link. It's a full in-depth look, so it's going to be more girthy than the posts have been up to this point, but hey, it's #2. Thanks! Now, enjoy the most iconic opening sequence in all of motion picture history.