Star Trek VII: Generations (1994)

  And so we move from the old to the new.  Well, at least to the 90's.  This is a pretty decent film and a good transition from the original series to the Next Generation.

Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), Scottie (James Doohan), and Chekov (Walter Koenig) are invited to the launch of a new Enterprise, under the command of a new captain when they get a distress call from a ship caught in an energy ribbon.  They respond and manage to save some of the passengers, including a man named Soran (Malcolm McDowell) but Captain Kirk is lost.  Seventy years later, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) receives some terrible personal news at the same time as yet another distress signal, this time from a star observatory.  They find the same man, Soran, as the only survivor of a vicious attack by Klingons.  Engineer Geordi (LeVar Burton) thinks something is off about the attack and seeks to re-examine the site.  Soran kidnaps him and escapes to the Klingon ship.  The Enterprise crew learns from Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg), who was one of the original survivors, that Soran wants to return to the ribbon because it keeps the inhabitants in a state of perpetual happiness outside of normal time and space.  In order to get inside, Soran destroys a planet with millions of living beings to distort the path of the ribbon.  Picard gets sucked up with him and must then confront his greatest desire and convince Kirk to also give up his personal fantasy.  Together, the two captains must change the past to save the future.

Holy shit, you guys.  It is really hard to concentrate when you have tiny gremlins behind you watching Veggie Tales, The Chipmunk Adventure, Pokemon:  Indigo League, and Ice Age:  Collision Course.  It's been a long weekend.

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

Okay, this is super late but I have an excuse.  I am taking care of my three godchildren and it has absorbed most of my attention for the day.  They are watching Zootopia in blissful serenity (or at least quiet) so I have time to post something.     Emma (Vivien Leigh) has clawed her way up from stripping to be the wife of the British ambassador to Naples (Alan Mowbray).  She has money, position, and everything she ever wanted until she meets the heroic Lord Nelson (Laurence Olivier).  He is also married but the two begin a passionate affair.

This is decent romantic drama.  It's different from my usual fare but well worth watching.  Leigh and Olivier were married in real life so there's an added layer to their on-screen romance.

Okay, this is a crap post.  I'm sorry.  My creativity has run a little dry.  I will do better next time, I swear.

Legend (2015)

  I'm 3/5 of the way done with my paper on British history so I thought I'd stop and revisit some more modern history with the Kray twins of 1960s London.

Ronnie (Tom Hardy) and Reggie Kray (also Tom Hardy) are twin gangsters.  Reg is the brains, suave and dapper, while Ron is a total psychopath.  Together, they run multiple nightclubs and rackets all over London and woo their respective flames, Frances (Emily Browning) and Teddy (Taron Egerton).  They are even being courted by the American mafia.  But when Reg goes to prison, Ron starts to fall apart without his brother and Frances realizes that Reg is never going to go straight with the twin pressures of easy money and familial obligation tugging on him.

This is a slick, very stylish film with a fantastic performance from Tom Hardy.  Each twin is a distinct personality, which is immediately apparent on top of the visual differences (one has glasses, one doesn't; one has lower jaw prosthetics, one doesn't).  The supporting cast is also excellent.  I don't know that it would be at the top of anyone's year-end list but it's a solid period gangster film.  I had never heard of the Krays so everything was new to me.  Maybe British people would feel differently.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

  True story:  I once referenced this movie in a paper on The Merchant of Venice in popular culture.

Another true story:  I have two 5-page essays to write this weekend.  I've started one of them.

Star Trek!

Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew are getting ready for retirement when Spock (Leonard Nimoy) announces that he has offered the Enterprise in a diplomatic mission with the Klingons.  Their home world is failing and they are suing for peace in an attempt to get Federation help in relocating to a habitable planet.  A lot of people have a problem with this, including Kirk who will never forgive them for killing his son.  But he meets with Ambassador Gorkon (David Warner) anyway over a polite but tense dinner.  Immediately afterwards, Gorkon's ship is fired upon, apparently by the Enterprise, and many of the crew killed.  The second-in-command, Chang (Christopher Plummer), demands the arrest of Kirk and Bones (DeForest Kelley), leaving Spock and Scotty (James Doohan) to unravel the mystery of where the torpedoes came from.

This was one of the better films in the whole series, as far as plot.  There was an actual attempt made to integrate social issues with a legitimate story, instead of just a concept stretched out to an hour and a half, like The Final Frontier.

Star Trek is at its best when it has something to say and even though the story is not new (surprise, some people don't like to see the end of a historical enemy), it's still interesting to see the effects of post-Cold War relations.  It's mostly academic for me since I was so young but I'm sure my parent's generation saw this play out in real life with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden realization that we had avoided Mutually Assured Destruction, as well as the accompanying death throes of paranoia, wondering if it was all a feint to get us to lower our guard.

(See, kids, movies are educational.  If you ever need to write a paper on the Cold War, Star Trek is there for you.)

The Left Handed Gun (1958)

  This was supposed to go up yesterday but I did homework instead.

William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (Paul Newman), is a young man with a hot temper and no formal education.  He is picked up as a cattle hand by peace-loving Tunstall (Colin Keith-Johnston), who is subsequently murdered by his business rivals.  Billy takes it upon himself to get revenge for his employer, despite barely knowing the man.  He convinces his two friends Charlie (James Congdon) and Tom (James Best) to help him gun down the killers, sparking a trail of bloodshed leading all the way to door of former outlaw turned sheriff, Pat Garrett (John Dehner).

Paul Newman was a bit old to be playing a teenager (he was 33 when the movie came out) but he does a good job nailing down that brash vulnerability so typical of that age.  The story is necessarily tragic but the movie goes further to heighten the pathos by drawing so many parallels between Garrett and the Kid.  Bonney desperately needed a father figure and Garrett could have filled that role if circumstances hadn't intervened.

The film is in black and white so you miss out on the piercing intensity of Newman's blue eyes, which were always his best feature.  They try to shoehorn in a love story, unnecessarily in my opinion, to provide a downbeat from the waves of violence but that's not going to be the parts you remember.  Overall, I'd say this isn't one of Newman's top-drawer works but it's not a terrible Western.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989)

  Okay, this was definitely the most boring Star Trek film I've seen yet.  Holy shit.

Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Bones (DeForest Kelley) are out camping in Yellowstone when they receive word that shore leave is cancelled and they have to immediately proceed to some remote planet to negotiate a hostage crisis.  The crisis was a trap, however, to bring a star-going vessel close enough for a fanatic Vulcan, Sybok (Laurence Luckinbill), to hijack.  He takes over the Enterprise, brainwashes most of the crew, and steers them towards the Great Barrier, some vast intergalactic storm that no ship has ever survived entering.  Sybok's aim is to locate the Vulcan equivalent of Eden and bring back God but of course Kirk wants to know why God would need a spaceship.

Barring a truly tragic vignette about Bones' past, there's nothing much for a casual viewer here.  This series is moving from fan service to actors desperate to prove they're still relevant, now almost thirty years after the end of their TV run.

Opportunity Knocks (1990)

  This movie was so awful I can't believe I wasted my precious leisure time on it.  Seriously, it is basically the exact same film as Down and Out in Beverly Hills except with a cheaper cast.

Eddie (Dana Carvey) is a con man on the run from a gangster (James Tolkan) after a prank has unintended consequences.  He holes up in a ritzy neighborhood with an empty house and is mistaken the next morning for the house sitter, who had decided not to show up, by the homeowner's parents (Robert Loggia and Doris Belack).  Believing this is their son's college friend, they invite Eddie into their upper class lives and encourage him to date their daughter (Julia Campbell).  Eddie soon decides that his original plan to con them isn't what he wants but it's too late to back out now.

Honestly, in another life Dana Carvey could have been a leading man.  But this is the 90s and it's awful.  His brand of mimicry falls completely flat in a narrative, the story is insipid and derivative, and it's not worth anyone's time to dredge this up from obscurity.  Carvey went on to have an extremely successful career and this can just be seen as a minor interruption in that journey.