Bustin' Ghosts.

As someone who always sees themselves reaching bandwagons after the controversy has died down, I only just saw the new Ghostbusters film yesterday. I’ll keep this short for fear of falling into the pitfall surrounding this film, but my two cents are this: never in recent memory have I felt so apathetic, so indifferent, so unwilling to even devote much of a thought towards this motion picture. I sat in a theatre with perhaps 10 or 15 others – maybe two or three chuckles from them throughout the entire thing – and I did not laugh at all while I was there. It honestly seems apparent that the clout surrounding its release is more important than the actual film itself: a generic, forgettable, PG-riddled improv collection of skits and call-backs to the original film it’s so obviously banking on. This is a product, and the only reason it still has legs is because people are making the identity politics surrounding it a big deal.

Star Trek V.

After the debacle of the previous film, I made the conscious decision to watch this next one completely sober. Less conscious was the decision to eventually write this several weeks after watching the film. Ah well…

This is probably the worst film in the series at this point. Granted, any film that tries to tackle the big question about the origins of the universe is pretty admirable, but everything else in it kinds of just flops sideways onto the proverbial carpet like some sort of resigned, defeated animal. The basic premise of the film from memory is that Spock has a half-brother who has embraced passion/emotion (probably the wisest choice considering everything else in the film) and becomes a fundamentalist looking for God. Through sheer retardation and bloodless violence, he assumes control of several diplomatic figures and armed thugs so he can eventually assume control of a starship and find where he believes God is. That ship just happens to be the Enterprise, whose senior officers/actors are on R&R and literally have to be called up to re-join for active service.

The film has some pretty funny moments though, so I’ll do my best to list them off. Shatner’s introductory scene features him supposedly free climbing El Capitan in Yosemite Park, while long-suffering associates Cam, Dave and I waited eagerly for the 25 year old man playing Shatner to turn his head accidentally or something. For some reason, the film’s producers wanted to introduce a potential romantic relationship between the portly-Canadian-man-impersonating-a-Scotsman known as Scotty and the unfortunate communications officer Uhura, which also earned several laughs. The lack of any real exterior shots of the Enterprise this time was really noticeable, as this film supposedly had a massive budget cut during production. Spock nerve-pinching a horse was also pretty hysterical.

Perhaps the most regrettable thing about the film was that I feel there was a sense of ambition to it. I mean sure, Shatner directed this one, but it seemed like he really wanted to try and top the previous film with some introspective character work that ultimately was overshadowed by problems concerning budget and general execution. Watching Bones live out the memory of him failing to save his terminally ill father was probably the best crafted aspect of the film. Otherwise, it’s just mostly a slog – if the best the movie can depict Eden as is a desert with a purple lens filter, then good riddance.

CHEKOV HUMILIATION 5: Makes wind noises into Sulu’s communicator (no context for that, sorry), and has to trick the film’s villain into believing he is the Enterprise’s captain. What fucks me off is that he pulls off the latter.

Eye in the sky with Helen Mirren.

Sometimes, I wander off to the cinema on a Thursday night and watch a film. And sometimes, I write a review for the film afterward that Salient chooses not to publish (ty).

The movie’s good, and it sort of slipped under the cracks a little. It’s understated, methodical, and chances are that you may forget that nothing has even exploded yet. The film is set over the course of a single day, as a joint British-US-Kenya military operation commanded by Colonel Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren) looks to identify several key Al-Shabab leaders and eliminate them before they can recruit two new members, one a British and the other an American citizen. It then deals with the ramifications of using drone warfare, particularly its effects on citizens, and the viewpoints towards this new type of action, etc. So all in all, a real “feel good” kind of motion picture.

It goes to great lengths to establish the complexity of the operations: cutting between the UAV pilots in one area, forensics people in another, Ms Mirren arguing with her superiors somewhere else, and the Kenyan army on standby. While the editing has a difficult job to keep track through several hard cuts, thankfully it’s held together and you remember the role of each individual. If there were any mild complaints about the film, some brief injections of humour in the film feel out of place, and their only function is to continually delay the decision-making process. Additionally the focus on civilians feels a little too melodramatic, particularly towards the end.

Otherwise, it’s a well-constructed film that makes watching several monitor screens strangely compelling, and even tense in parts. As far as “day in the life” films about drones go, it’s probably the best one I’ve seen. It’s good to see a film actually play with your expectations about what outcome it may or may not take, and one that isn’t pushing 150 minutes in length like most modern contemporaries. Also, kudos to Alan Rickman for his performance in one of his last films. As unlikely as it sounds, it would have been great to see you reprise the role of Hans Gruber again.

Star Trek IV.

Happy (really late) May the 4^th.

I may have bailed on this one due to the side effects of somewhat excessive alcohol consumption, and by saying “I may have”, I really mean “I did”. Please accept this apology in the form of a flattering and professionally crafted treatise concerning the aforementioned 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in the meantime, whilst I prepare a gift package for myself:

"It’s the one with the whales in it. In all honesty, this could be one of the greatest and most enjoyable motion pictures ever made, at least on par with anything made by Godard, Truffaut, Lean etc. As I transported myself away from the scene of Spock nerve-pinching a punk rocker on a San Francisco bus, I inevitably entered the mind of a young child on a Saturday morning watching TV, because this film is best made to be watched in the early hours of the weekend.”

CHEKOV HUMILIATION 4: Renews tensions between the Cold War’s biggest superpowers, damages one of San Francisco’s wharfs courtesy of a sustained head injury, and likely affects the infrastructure and schedule of one of the city’s busiest hospitals.

Reading too far into The Boss.

Against my better judgement, I saw a Melissa McCarthy film in the cinemas today. I’ll be the first to admit, I had no prior experience with her or her output. And after this film, I still have no experience. The movie was terrible, but also exactly what I thought it would be.

I want to call the film shamefully capitalist. We follow a main character who works her way up to becoming the 47^th richest woman in the United States, which seems an oddly specific number, and makes a wonderfully subtle public appearance alongside the wonderfully subtle song and dance number by T-Pain and tells her legions of fans to follow the “American Dream” and work hard. Knowing the way the United States actually works and the people there that actually made it big, that seems a little bit inaccurate. After she is convicted of insider trading within her company and is rewarded with about five minutes and one unfunny gag work of jail time, she seeks to work her way back up again. She does this through encouraging Girl Guides to forcibly sell as many brownies as they can to unsuspecting families to turn in a profit, which she then distributes back to them in the form of physical wads of cash. This is suspicious to me, and I would follow it up more if I knew any more about how the economy works in general.

Between this film and Pixels (it hurts to put that in italics), this is building a case with regards to Peter Dinklage’s recent film career. When he’s not on his small budget hole-in-the-wall TV series, he’s played exclusively for laughs in these terrible comedies as a dwarf who has preferences for other cultures and accents. Here, it’s Japanese culture he’s into, which is thankfully left at samurai swords and top-knots only. If it went any further than that, I would definitely have reconnected with the latter part of my fight or flight senses while sitting in the theatre. Is this movie just racist to little people? Is this movie racist to Peter Dinklage? Can we help Peter Dinklage overcome this typecasting? Can we help him find more racist roles? This particular part is just nonsensical, and feels like an outtake from Bruno, with the exception of his romantic (???) history with the film’s lead.

Star Trek III.

And so on….

I actually don’t mind this film that much. Granted, the science and logic in most of it is absolute toffee, but seeing as I laughed at both at the jokes and the special effects, that makes it a winner to me. The film, and both the experience I had watching it, definitely felt like a transitioning stage for my journey. As important as it was that the movie surrounds the eventual resurrection of fan favourite character Spock through contrived death/rebirth imagery, alongside that we moved my laptop closer to us halfway through. You may think I’m straining to get this point across, but I saw it as both poetic and beautiful. Anyways, Kirk and crew are still hung up because Spock died fixing the warp drive. They steal the Enterprise from Earth because of a sudden chance to bring him back, and encounter a group of rogue Klingons who want the Genesis science-thing from the last film. That’s pretty much the film.

There are similar themes to the last one: dealing with loss, old age, proper performance and Shatner’s undying love towards a man who in the past displayed no outward signs of emotion toward him. The Klingon villains in the movie are indeed a stepdown from Khan, because everything in life is, but Christopher Lloyd’s performance as their leader is admittedly over the top and pretty entertaining. His obsession with the Genesis device goes beyond logic really as the movie proves it to be a hoax, courtesy of a grand mistake by Kirk’s son Dr Marcus. Through science tampering, the planet that the device forms quickly becomes unstable and begins to fall apart, enabling quite an amazing fight scene between the actor who played Doc Brown and a young man far too athletic to be Kirk. I was immediately floored by the choreography displayed: choking, grabbing the other one’s foot etc.

Even though the planet material is eye-rolling at best, there’s still a good sense of camaraderie between the cast, which probably comes courtesy of Spock actor Leonard Nimoy directing the film. Bones’ sudden realisation that Spock transferred his consciousness to his head without his permission is pretty damn funny, and his erratic behaviour preceding this turns out to be enough to land him in prison for the night. Those bureau agents in the future just don’t take chances with wayward senior personnel hanging out in seedy bars while on shore leave. It’s like Space Saigon or something. Granted, as much as I probably would be backing Kirk on finding Spock’s body again or whatever, I think I would still look at further consultation with my superiors or something before stealing a guarded star ship, or at the very least considering other perfectly legal alternatives. Remember in Star Wars when you could hire a ship and a pilot to go places? Fuck, wrong franchise. End.

CHEKOV HUMILIATION 3: Tricks Kirk into believing a resurrected Spock is in his cabin early on in the film.

Star Trek II.

Allow me to get this off my chest first…

CHEKOV HUMILIATION 2: Allows Khan’s revenge to be set in motion by discovering him on Ceti Alpha V, is fed a mind-controlling eel through his ear, and endangers the lives of all scientists on the Regula I station to be found, tortured and killed by the film’s villain. Also, he hides himself with his captain inside a container that Kirk has to open by punching the emergency glass (seriously, fuck Chekov).

Alright then. Although I unfortunately broke my sacred oath to do this on a weekly basis, I made up for it by watching the next Star Trek film not only with more company, but also within the sheltered and delicate comforts of my own freezing cold Aro Valley flat. The end result was that I was able to drink throughout the entirety of the film, and tensions ran so high this time around that a shirt was ripped clean open. This was of course in reference to the famous scene where Kirk did that thing from The Big Bang Theory or whatever. Having seen this film a few times beforehand, it was difficult to show restraint for the things that I actually really liked about it.

The movie’s all about revisiting the past, as genetically engineered Khan Noonien Singh finds a chance to escape from the planet he was exiled on 15 years ago to exact revenge on Kirk, the man who put him there in the first place. Running concurrently is the experimentation of the Genesis device, some scientific whatcha-call-it that creates life at an accelerated rate but also be conveniently used as an explosive, which Khan comes across in his pursuit of sweet, sweet revenge. The film is a definite improvement as it handles Kirk much better by drawing attention to Shatner’s age this time around. He looks old, tired, decorates his apartment with priceless antiquities in a desperate attempt to look younger to his friends and is probably shown putting on a girdle in a deleted scene or something. The only reason he is commanding the Enterprise this time around is rather the opposite of in-universe vanity last time: the ship is largely being run by cadets, and an emergency situation requires the most senior officer to take command. It’s nice when things in movies actually make sense sometimes.

Khan’s also a lot of fun as well. His slouched, open-shirt manner upon the captain’s chair of a commandeered ship was worth trying to replicate whilst watching. It’s interesting that the character is supposed to be Indian, and people were upset that Benedict Cumberbatch played him last time. However, it’s worth pointing out that the actor who made him the villain he is in this film was Mexican, and does not even try to attempt any vaguely resembling Indian affectation. What he could do was passionately quote Herman Melville at both the camera and my own heart, and he did it. Importantly, he has motivation here that makes sense to the audience, as the planet they were marooned on underwent convenient yet significant climate change that left them on the fringes without any assistance from Kirk or anybody. Again this makes sense from a script setting, even if it’s not entirely realistic. This does take place in a universe after all where many planets are breathable to humans, and it’s a wonder that all the things Khan and friends went through didn’t lead to them just suffocating at the end or something. Mind you, there wouldn’t be a movie, and it would make the film’s protagonist look even worse…

Overall, I commend this film for allowing me to drink regardless of whether we had a drinking game devised or not. Looking forward to seeing Spock resurrected next time.