rate the last movie you saw

[Eric Paddon]

I've said it before. Trek IV is what immunized me forever from being interested in any Trek project that came afterwards so it did have a negative effect on me for reasons that went beyond the music. (and revisiting TMP again made me realize how on some levels of set-up, IV copycats the threat premise of the first movie too! Probe threatens Earth because it's waiting for a message)

[AndyDursin]

Oh well. My experience with the film couldn't possibly be different. And I don't feel guilty about having that opinion. I love the film as an end point to the previous two pictures. Hit every box for me. I like the score and I think it works 100% perfectly in the film. No, I don't wish that someone else had scored it. For me the score is a part of the film's appeal. I've never been a big Rosenman fan but dramatically it functions perfectly in the movie. Anyway, you guys can avoid it -- I'll keep enjoying it as I have since 1986. For me it's the best rounded film of the entire series in so far as entertainment value goes, while retaining a message in sync with the old show.

[AndyDursin]

And I don't mean to be too touchy on this subject. I've just long felt a few really hardened old Trek fans just didn't like the movie because it was "too popular" or "appealed to too many non-fans" or was "too silly" or "had too much humor for a Trek story." I think they missed the boat, but obviously I respect your dissenting views (I just don't agree with them lol). And it's like, if there's one time I'm going to like Rosenman's Lord of the Rings theme (as part of a "Lenny's Greatest Hits" package), it's in this movie dammit! (plus it's not as if he has a choir singing "STAR-TREK-IV" instead of "RO-BO-COP!"

[Eric Paddon]

My problems basically came down to this. After not being happy with the cop-out decision to resurrect Spock as a sop to the fanbase when WOK had worked near flawlessly as a story, I wasn't ready or mentally prepared for the storyline to suddenly shift to comedy. When Act 1 of your trilogy of stories is on the level of "City on the Edge of Forever" style of drama and the final act becomes "A Piece of the Action" that isn't good storytelling for me personally. Now I GET that most average filmgoers are not likely to have that kind of a mentality when it comes to storytelling but that's just how I feel about it when the Trek films had become an ongoing storyline as opposed to self-contained adventures in the same way that the SW trilogy had become a storyline. Perhaps it's a reflection of the fact that so many other movie franchises back in the day marketed their sequels more like they were an ongoing storyline (the Bond films of course don't fall in that category) that I was just more self-aware that stylistically this and storywise this is not what I wanted to see.

But the other problem is that Trek IV revisits a concept it had done more than once in the series with time travel and "fish out of water" humor and the problem is it didn't play fair by the rules established in the original series. I'm one of those who can let go the matter of Chekov recognizing Khan (heck, even if they had used Sulu, Sulu doesn't appear in "Space Seed"!) but when I have seen the matter of how care and caution needs to be observed in the past suddenly getting thrown out the window with a vengeance, sorry, I'm not going to be laughing along. Not to mention how this film introduced the idiotic conceit that they don't use money in the future (GIVE ME A BREAK!) which also undermines what's been made clear in the past and is a clear case of some leftie writer indulging in his socialist fantasy utopia vision of the future, and then the final straw for me (and believe me I was groaning and doing a face palm at the time I saw this in a theater) was when Kirk, who is supposed to be familiar with American history is dumb enough to send CHEKOV to snoop around a US Navy vessel during the days of the Cold War? This was going for a cheap laugh IMO.

And I know mine is a minority opinion but I just don't like the ending with its giant "reset" theme of everyone back to their TV series templates complete with a new identical Enterprise that really isn't the old one etc. To me that's creative stagnation and made me feel like the entire trilogy of stories had been rather purposeless when taking in their totality as a storyline. Because of that, I can't even tolerate Trek III. As far as I'm concerned, I'm better off ending Trek history with WOK which is why I can make an allowance to see TMP again but everything post-WOK (as a result of IV) I have never had any interest in seeing. That's how much IV drove me away from "Trekdom".

[mkaroly]

For me personally Star Trek IV was (and remains) outstanding. I pretty much have the same feelings about it as Andy does so anything I say will be a repeat of what he said! Lol...

[Paul MacLean]

I've just long felt a few really hardened old Trek fans just didn't like the movie because it was "too popular" or "appealed to too many non-fans" or was "too silly" or "had too much humor for a Trek story."

I can't argue with the box office figures, but I believe one of the reasons this film was popular with non-Star Trek fans was due to it sacrificing some of Star Trek's tropes to appeal to a "mainstream" demographic.

Apart from that, I found the script weak. It never explained what the alien probe was, nor its relationship to the whales, nor why contacting the whales caused the probe to relent. Were the whales telling it that humans are nice, so the probe should spare the federation? If so, how? Whales are intelligent -- but not that intelligent. Besides, by the 23rd century, scientists would probably have created new new whales from the DNA of whale remains (the Russians are currently working on creating a new Wooly Mammoth, so it's not far-fetched).

How come Sulu can fly a helicopter? I know how to drive a car, but that doesn't mean I can drive a horse and carriage. How is Catherine Hicks going to continue her work in the 23rd century? Ok, she is familiar with George and Gracie, but she knows nothing of 23rd century technology -- and not just that which is related to her profession; things like 23rd century toothbrushes, toilets, transportation,etc. will be incomprehensible to her.

I was also irritated by the preachy "Greenpeace" tone of the film, and the way catered to the popular 80s sentiment of "Save The Wales!" (which seemed to be on every bumper sticker at the time).

And as we saw in "The City on the Edge of Forever", traveling into the past runs the risk of altering the future. After what happened in "The City on the Edge of Forever", you'd think the Enterprise crew would know better than to intentionally introduce future technology and alter history. But never let plausibility get in the way of a cute gag I guess. And what was the point of that silly shot of all those heads emerging from water in the time travel sequence?

And it's like, if there's one time I'm going to like Rosenman's Lord of the Rings theme (as part of a "Lenny's Greatest Hits" package), it's in this movie dammit! (plus it's not as if he has a choir singing "STAR-TREK-IV" instead of "RO-BO-COP!"

It's definitely a better score than RoboCop 2 (which oddly enough repurposed snippets of the Star Trek IV's theme), and I don't think it ruins the film, but I found it clichéd in some instances -- particularly the Yamaha DX7s and drum machines when the cast arrive in San Francisco. When I heard that I half-expected Axel Foley to appear. (And of course Rosenman patted himself on the back for his "innovative" approach to that scene.)

[AndyDursin]

MONTY PYTHON'S THE MEANING OF LIFE
8/10

I know it doesn't have the cohesive narrative of "Life of Brian" and to a lesser degree "Holy Grail," but the final "full" Python feature still manages to make me laugh consistently. The songs are all great, and some of the individual vignettes are hilarious. Terry Gilliam's opening set-piece, visually stunning as it is, goes on much too long -- the joke is over at about the 7 minute mark, but the segment lingers on so the actual movie doesn't start until 17 minutes in! I'm not sure why that was necessary, unless it was to secure his involvement in the project as a whole.

At any rate, Universal's 4K remaster looks substantially better than the 15 year old 1080p Blu-Ray, with much higher detail and warmer colors. The extras from the 2013 are great, most notably the hour-long reunion of Cleese, Palin, Jones, Gilliam and (via the net) Idle, which is hysterically funny even as they admit up front this one didn't turn out quite as well as planned.

[Eric Paddon]

The Time Machine (2002) 3 of 10
-Good Lord, I'd forgotten how tedious and boring this film was, even with just a 95 minute running time. In contrast to George Pal's wonderful grand entertainment of 1960 and other good tellings like the "Alien Voices" radio drama with Leonard Nimoy (which is probably the best radio drama for evoking terrifying atmosphere when listening to it in the dark) this ridiculous reimagining of Wells' novel is a giant mess from start to finish, beginning with a lame backstory motivation for the time traveler where his fiance gets killed and he builds the machine for the purpose of changing the past to prevent her death (the whole issue of how to avoid running into his other self from the past is never brought up because they don't treat it as a possible problem. Amazing how even the dreadful "Back To The Future 2" dealt with that more intelligently than this!) but then lo and behold she just dies again in a bizarre accident (coming on the heels of a wasted three second cameo by Alan Young from the original film as a flower shop owner), and abruptly without any further rational explanation, our hero is off into the future for the silly reason of "Why can't I change the past?" The fact that he DID change the past by making it different than it was before even with the same outcome never seems to occur to him.

-All the things that made the Pal version wonderful are absent. The Filby character is utterly wasted in contrast to the original where he served a real purpose in the story. The Orlando Jones all-knowing computer that is served up in the "2030" sequence so we can meet him again in the future loses all credibility when the script insanely decides to break the Fourth Wall by having Jones refer to the H.G. Wells novel AND the George Pal movie. And then when we reach the distant future, the Eloi are given this PC makeover into the perfect non-Caucasian race living a Paradise lifestyle like South American Natives, full of intelligence and noble pacifism that is totally at odds with the book's subtext of the Eloi as a self-centered race that doesn't care for its fellow Eloi (remember how in the Pal movie none come to Weena's aid when she nearly drowns) and just wastes away in endless fun and frolic. That of course will not do here since we need to see Guy Pearce get on with gorgeous Samantha Mumba in her native costume in the end, so here we have the Eloi presented in a way totally false to the original story. The Morlocks are shown coming out in broad daylight, totally removing another important element of the story and then the idiocy reaches its ultimate climax with Jeremy Irons' Uber-Morlock whose explanations to Pearce still had my scratching my head. The end result of this film is just a hideous mess and a reminder of how so many sub-par reimaginings were cluttering the landscape back then (the Burton POTA, the 1998 "Lost In Space" movie etc.)

[AndyDursin]

I would gladly take the Burton APES over both of those! But that mid/late '90s/early 00's remake roster, you're right Eric, had so many misfires -- as did the sci-fi/fantasy genre as a whole (CONGO, THE SHADOW, we can go on and on). THE AVENGERS wasn't far removed from that time either.

THE TIME MACHINE was a mess. I'm always surprised when I've spoken to someone (and I remember a couple) who saw it and were like "I kind of liked it". Like THE HAUNTING (there's another one), Spielberg and the Dreamworks crew were meddling and toiling over reshoots -- I didn't recall the specifics (it's been 20 years) but the director "dropped out" before shooting was over, and Gore Verbinski apparently finished it. The entire production was a disaster apparently, and it showed in the finished product.

Here's a site with some of the pre-release stories that ran...there were a lot of them back before it came out as I recall now, detailing rumors (that were reality) of what a mess the movie was.

http://www.colemanzone.com/Time_Machine ... remake.htm

May 26, 2001

The following two reports were posted on Dark Horizon's web site:

'Joe S.' has a follow up scoop to yesterday's story: "Just to follow up on today's story. I JUST returned from the TIME MACHINE set myself. YES, the A.D. staff has been let go. YES, they are reshooting crucial parts of the story. Jeremy Irons (billed on the Call Sheet as the "Uber-Morlock") was brought in to shoot his intro scene with Guy Pearce. There are also two full units shooting to hurry and finish the troubled production".

"Although Gore Verbinski stepping in was news a week or so ago, there's a little more happening that hasn't turned up yet. Gore's first AD was brought on as a 'technical consultant'. Shortly thereafter, she took the reigns after the original first was fired and the rest of the AD staff quit in a silent protest or something. This is just a number of strange dealings with only two weeks of shooting left and from what I understand, they don't even know how they're going to approach the futuristic NYC world, have been rewriting key points of the story, and are reshooting the ending with the "new and improved" director".

...and:

LOS ANGELES (The Hollywood Reporter) --- Only 18 days before wrapping principal photography for his live-action feature directorial debut on DreamWorks/Warner Bros.' "The Time Machine," director Simon Wells has abruptly dropped out of the project.

Gore Verbinski has stepped in to complete the movie on schedule.

DreamWorks announced the move Thursday afternoon, saying that Wells had to step down after being diagnosed as "suffering from extreme exhaustion" and ordered by doctors to rest for a minimum of two weeks.

Verbinski, who directed DreamWorks' "The Mexican" and "Mouse Hunt," is expected to hand the reins back to Wells after the completion of filming. Wells plans to return to oversee all postproduction duties. "Our first concern is for Simon's health, so we are very pleased that Gore was able to come in and pinch hit," said DreamWorks Pictures co-head Walter Parkes, who added that Wells plans to resume his duties overseeing postproduction on the film in several weeks. "We look forward to Simon Wells' return to the production ... and wish him the best during this time," Parkes said. When asked for further details, a DreamWorks spokeswoman said, "We're not going into detail ... he's just wiped."

Wells is the great-grandson of H.G. Wells, the science fiction author on whose work "Time Machine" is based. Although the project was his first live-action feature, Wells has directed several animated features, including DreamWorks' "The Prince of Egypt." "Time," which stars Guy Pearce, Mark Addy, Philip Rosco and Jeremy Irons, has been shooting in New York and Los Angeles since February.

This would be, tellingly, Wells' only live-action film. He'd never direct another. In fact he'd only direct one more animated feature -- the disastrous MARS NEEDS MOMS -- which I think might still be the biggest money loser in the history of Disney.

[Paul MacLean]

THE TIME MACHINE was a mess. I'm always surprised when I've spoken to someone (and I remember a couple) who saw it and were like "I kind of liked it".

Sorry, I'm one of those people!

Of course I saw it on TV on a Sunday afternoon when I had nothing else to do, and didn't have high expectations. And come-on, Samantha Mumba was cute!

[Paul MacLean]

The Kentuckian (7/10)

Once of Burt Lancaster's few directorial efforts, The Kentuckian tells the story of a widowed hunter (Lancaster) who is traveling to Texas with his son in search of a new life. However he gets waylaid when he stops in a small village to visit his brother, who cajoles the protagonist to stay and work in the tobacco business. Lancaster is faced with the choice of staying and becoming rich, or pursuing the dream of living free in an untamed land.

It's a good premise, but the film is slow and lacks energy much of the time. There are however a few terrific sequences, such as Lancaster's narrow escape from a riverboat of crooked gamblers, and a somewhat disturbing scene where Lancaster defends himself against the village tavern owner (and local bully) played by Walter Matthau in his screen debut (Matthau is outstanding too). But overall the film is pretty static. Lancaster unsurprisingly extracts first-rate performances from his cast, but the film just lacks energy. It's interesting to hear a Bernard Herrmann score in a film like this (as he did not score many epic or "outdoor" subjects) but his music -- while good -- isn't among his most memorable.

[Monterey Jack]

I would gladly take the Burton APES over both of those!

Same. It's an obviously compromised movie (and Mark Wahlberg is gravely miscast), yet it's far more entertaining than the critical drubbing it received would indicate. Great Rick Baker makeup, Danny Elfman's percussive score is fantastic, and all of the ape performers were clearly having a blast (especially Paul Giamatti). Just a shame almost none of the excellent extras from the 2-disc DVD set (from the early-00s salad days of the format, when every studio was going for broke in providing top-notch supplemental content) were included on the Blu, as the chances of this getting a 4K upgrade are practically nil.

Also odd that people always bitch about Burton "making the same movie over and over", yet when this one was first released, people professed disappointment that it wasn't "Burtonesque" enough!

[AndyDursin]

THE TIME MACHINE was a mess. I'm always surprised when I've spoken to someone (and I remember a couple) who saw it and were like "I kind of liked it".

Sorry, I'm one of those people!

Of course I saw it on TV on a Sunday afternoon when I had nothing else to do, and didn't have high expectations. And come-on, Samantha Mumba was cute!

I don't besmirch anyone's affection for Samantha Mumba

[AndyDursin]

Same. It's an obviously compromised movie (and Mark Wahlberg is gravely miscast), yet it's far more entertaining than the critical drubbing it received would indicate. Great Rick Baker makeup, Danny Elfman's percussive score is fantastic, and all of the ape performers were clearly having a blast (especially Paul Giamatti). Just a shame almost none of the excellent extras from the 2-disc DVD set (from the early-00s salad days of the format, when every studio was going for broke in providing top-notch supplemental content) were included on the Blu, as the chances of this getting a 4K upgrade are practically nil.

Also odd that people always bitch about Burton "making the same movie over and over", yet when this one was first released, people professed disappointment that it wasn't "Burtonesque" enough!

I've got an urge to watch it again. And you're right, we'll have to live with that old Fox Blu-Ray (few extras, MPEG2 encoding) since Disney is going to lock it up -- like most Fox movies -- and never let it see the light of day outside streaming on one of their services.

The one thing I appreciated was that it was PLANET OF THE APES -- not CGI APES doing a Mad Max rerun out in the forests of Vancouver. Plus its sense of humor and art direction were all playful. By contrast the humorless, glum Fox "prequel trilogy" became less inventive and interesting with each subsequent installment.

The amazing thing -- for all the vitriol, Burton's APES is still by far the most successful of the modern Apes films when adjusted for inflation. (Even unadjusted, its 2001 gross nearly equals DAWN and still outranks the others)

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/franchise ... s_table_36

[Eric Paddon]

I don't besmirch anyone's affection for Samantha Mumba

Likewise. It's just that her character was totally out of place and not right for this story, and given the short running time in which we have this driving conceit of Pearce's obsession with changing the past to save Siena Guillory, the film never really gives us a properly developed relationship between Pearce and Mumba other than the fact that we know she's hot, and she'll be the perfect consolation prize for his failed efforts!