Wow – here is one that has NOT aged well. (I’m afraid to see what Delicatessen looks like.) Loud, simple and, in a way, cheap, that’s how this feels to me.
There are some clever scenes – like stealing a key by attaching a magnet to a mouse’s but and sprinkling cheese on the floor – but, oy, it’s so noisy. Somehow Brazil and Eraserhead are timeless, but this just screams early 90s Angelika Film Center naivety.
A must-see for fetishists, as Seven of Nine wears an insanely tight wrasslin outfit and gets the tar beaten out of her by The Rock.
A pretty interesting concept: an atrocity memorial that imprints its horrors on people whether they want it or not.
This is one of those episodes where the ideas floating around underneath are actually better than what actually made it onto the screen.
This is a reasonably entertaining episode where a highly advanced race of people ask, “What is this thing called ‘music’?”
Some nice in-jokes about fan worship, too. Plus, anything when people treat The Doctor like the hologram he is, as you know, makes me happy.
The first time I saw this, it was just about the formalism. I let the images and music and stilted dialogue wash over me. I may as well has left the subtitles off. And, for the most part, I dug it.
This time I really tried to follow something if not resembling a narrative, than at least micro-narratives. Enough to blurb about (as others have done.)
I failed. So, I suppose, I don’t actually like this movie. I guess I’m in that camp.
But I do recognize its beauty and the mark it left on design.
Now I hang my head in shame for being unable to connect with it enough to wax pseudo intellectually about its flaws. (I still love Hiroshima, Mon Amour, though.)
A fairly ridiculous Mutiny on the Bounty set in the French Foreign Legion. Junk, but entertaining.
Quite possibly the best popular entertainment of the last five years.
Watched it again with the commentary track. Floored me.
Punch it.
I ignored this movie when it came out because a) I liked the books a great deal and b) it seemed like a shallow attempt to cash in on LOTR/Harry Potter overflow.
But the other day I realized just how much stinking money this movie has made. Gargantuan sums. And the DVD is one of the best selling DVDs of all time.
Anyway, the movie kinda stinks.
If you can stay awake til the end, though, there are some Minotaurs, Centaurs, Cyclopses, Phoenixes and other bits of nerdiness. But, altogether, a bit of a drag.
This is some nerd-ass shit.
Voyager gets stuck in synchronous orbit of a planet – becoming its third pole, causing tremors. It is also visible with the naked eye, making it a centerpiece of the emerging civilization on the ground.
Oh – and a second on the ship = a day on the planet. So we watch them go from cave-dwellars to warp capable in less than one week.
A lot of other really great stuff happens here, fulfilling the promise of the flawed TOS episode Wink of an Eye.
1/2
So, what’s happening back on Earth during all this?
Turns out Reg Barclay (THAT guy!?!?) is doing his best to get in contact with our friends.
This is a very predictable episode, but I can’t deny it didn’t warm my heart. It’s good to know the spirit of Starfleet continues.
Knowledge makes you paranoid. That’s the moral of this one.
Seven of Nine figures out a way to have all the ship’s knowledge zapped into her as she sleeps and, as such, she is convinced crazy-ass conspiracies are going on. (Of course, the only real conspiracy is on behalf of the Doctor who keeps her in those ridiculous costumes, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, Janeway’s maternal lecturing turns her around – just in time for them to catapult themselves a year closer to the Alpha Quadrant via a slingshot device.
A crazy-ass anomaly that occasionally comes out of sub-space to suck everything up in its path is back! And it is assumed that a missing Mars explorer from the early 21st Century might be in there. An away team goes to investigate.
This episode would have been far better if there was less Chakotay.
Voyager encounters a labyrinth within subspace, then gets kicked out by some jerks, and hide on a planet that has been devastated by way. They awaken some survivors and start to rebuild their society, only to learn that *they* are even bigger jerks.
I may be telling it a bit wrong, but this is actually one of the more morally ambiguous Voyager episodes out there, and proof that sometimes it is better for Voyager not to stick its big nacelles in everyone’s business.. Recommended.
Tuvok gets a bum on the head and goes full retard. It’s kinda like Regarding Henry in space.
The B-story, however, is kinda interesting – about a planet’s scientist who is convinced these sub-space creatures exist, but everyone thinks he’s crazy.
And, yeah, I suppose the last scene between Tuvok and Neelix is a little bit touching. Dammit if Neelix hasn’t grown on me.
1/2
It isn’t just Bruce Springsteen songs who anthropomorphosize vehicles.
Tom Paris gets swept up in an affair with a “haunted” ship. Not terrible, but not that great. The scenes with Neelix reverting to his old “trader” ways are fun.
