May 20, 2013
Okay, my initial review of Star Trek: Into Darkness (is there a colon in the title? It feels like there should be a colon) was a bit threadbare. Yeah, it’s hard to talk about the movie without getting neck-deep into spoiler territory. So, here is my SPOILERRIFFIC™ discussion of Into Darkness. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, don’t click the READ MORE link. Just, uh, hey click this link and read about another movie with Darkness in the title. It’s called Creature of Darkness, and it really crazy. Seriously. It’s got this alien that dresses in a raincoat and hat and hunts people, and…well, just read it. Unless you’ve seen Into Darkness. Then, click away…
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Posted in Movies Q-S | Tagged action, aliens, Internet, military, monsters, movie reviews, movies, sci-fi, thrillers | Leave a Comment »
May 19, 2013
Finally, the new Star Trek movie. And it only took four freaking years! Hey thanks, J.J. Abrams, for taking time out of your busy schedule to make good on the promise of the franchise reboot. I mean, I know you had to make that E.T.-Meets-My-Midlife-Crisis movie about the kids who dick around for two hours and then meet a monster. And, yeah, that was totally worth putting off the new Star Trek film for a couple more years. But, hey, the new movie is here and it was almost worth the wait.
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Posted in Movies Q-S, Uncategorized | Tagged action, aliens, graphic novels, military, movie reviews, movies, sci-fi, Star Trek, Zoe Saldana | Leave a Comment »
May 18, 2013
In preparation for my review of Star Trek: Into Darkness, which will be posting soon, I’m re-posting a couple of previous Star Trek reviews. Live and long and prosper, amigos.
Now this is a summer movie.
After the self-serious, leaden, insert-gun-in-mouth grimness of Wolverine, we now have a blockbuster that understands the importance of being light, airy, and fun. And inexplicably, that movie is a Star Trek film. Well, I guess if we can elect a black President, we can make a summer blockbuster out of Star Trek—a franchise which seemed to have hacked up its death rattle sometime around the early 2000s.
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Posted in Movies Q-S, Wrap-ups and Round-ups | Tagged action, aliens, guns, military, monsters, movies, Reviews, sci-fi, Star Trek, thrillers | Leave a Comment »
May 18, 2013
In preparation for my review of Star Trek: Into Darkness, which will be posting soon, I’m re-posting a couple of previous Star Trek reviews. Live and long and prosper, amigos.
Okay, kicking off Reader Request Week here at The Flickering Screen we have Star Trek: Nemesis for loyal reader Quiconque. Qui left a comment on my review of In the Spider’s Web stating: “if you’re willing to sacrifice a few more brain cells, I would greatly appreciate an analyisis of Star Trek: Nemesis, if only to have someone else explain the plot to me. I watched it last night on cable, and I saw a clone and a Deanna Troi rape scene plucked fresh from fanfic, but other than that I don’t know what happened.”
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May 18, 2013
In preparation for my review of Star Trek: Into Darkness, which will be posting soon, I’m re-posting a couple of previous Star Trek reviews. Live and long and prosper, amigos.
Is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan the most successful film sequel ever? Yes. Yes it is. Oh, I’m sorry—that was not rhetorical. It’s almost impossible to overstate how important this film is in the Star Trek canon. In June of 1982, when it first hit screens, Trek was still just a short-lived, but well-known TV show that had spawned a logy, overblown movie that had failed to fulfill Paramount’s dreams of creating a franchise that could compete with Star Wars. Writer-director Nicolas Meyer was given a substantially-reduced budget, but made a film that was fleet, exciting, and most importantly tapped into the humanism of Trek that made people like it. Not only did it draw non-Trek fans, but it created a visual and storytelling template that would successfully carry Trek for thirty years, four additional series, nine more films, and earn Paramount billions (that is with a B) of dollars from the franchise they so desperately wanted. If any sequel did more heavy lifting than that, I don’t know what it is. But what’s so great about it? Here are a couple of things:
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Posted in Movies Q-S, Wrap-ups and Round-ups | Tagged action, aliens, military, monsters, movie reviews, movies, sci-fi | 1 Comment »
May 6, 2013
Well, that kicked just about as much ass as there was to kick, didn’t it?
I gotta admit, I didn’t go into Iron Man 3 with high hopes. It’s not that I set the bar low—quite the contrary. After The Avengers served pretty much as the Omega of the Marvel comic superhero franchise, and especially after the obnoxious, deadly-dull Iron Man 2, I set the bar very high for this movie. I didn’t think there was any way it couldn’t suck. Well, it looks like my instincts are a nothing if not consistent (though, I’m still pretty sure that Kozmo.com stock will go through the roof any day now…), because it’s pretty tough to see how this movie can be topped—whatever else comes out this summer.
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Posted in Movies D-I | Tagged action, graphic novels, Marvel Comics, military, movie reviews, movies, Reviews, sci-fi, superhero, thrillers | Leave a Comment »
May 2, 2013
Another school year is drawing to a close, and another class of students is advancing—maybe to a new grade, or maybe out into the world. The leave behind them scores of proud, satisfied teachers—men and women who spent the past nine or so months giving everything to classroom after classroom of students. Amid a barrage of public criticism unprecedented in history, vilified by pundits, scapegoated by politicians, they still get up at the crack of dawn every day to stand in front of dozens of students crammed into too-small schools and shape the very future of America. No film I’ve ever seen has really communicated the nigh-miraculous job these people do better than 1996’s The Substitute, a film which shows us if this if we are to fix our ailing school system it’s going to take more than budget cuts and empty rhetoric. It’s going to take Tom Berenger and a team of heavily-armed mercenaries.
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Posted in Movies Q-S | Tagged action, drugs, guns, martial arts, military, movie reviews, movies, murder, thrillers | Leave a Comment »
