Random Thoughts

Worst. Punk. Ever.

Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home. Leonard Nimoy. 1986.

OK, we’re firmly in the 80s now. Instead of the crew of the Enterprise having extremely shiny faces now (a typical 70s thing), everybody has thoroughly powdered skin now. All matte.

I did watch this film in the 80s, and the only thing I remember about it is that a whale saves the universe (spoilers!) and that it’s possibly the worst Star Trek film ever. As difficult as the competition in that field is.

It’s directed by Leonard Nimoy, though, which I didn’t remember. I’ve read both of his autobiographies in the meantime (“I Am Not Spock” and “I Am Spock”), and he seems like a smart and interesting guy, so I was wondering whether I had misjudged this film.

This is a quite slow film, which is a thing I like… Nimoy allows all the main characters (Uhura, Bones, Sulu, Kirk, Scotty, Chekov) to establish rapport with the camera. I don’t think they’ve ever looked better or more real.

And it’s a pretty amusing film, but I can totally see why I was disappointed with it as a teenager. It’s a time travel thing back to the then-present, and that’s not Max Sci Fi, which is what I was looking for.

But this is totally not the worst Star Trek film ever. It’s very different, yes, but it’s a pretty good movie.

This blog post is part of the Century series.

Spies Like Us. John Landis. 1985.

It was this one or The Purple Rose of Cairo, which I don’t have any positive memories of.

This is such a confusing movie. It has all the hallmarks of a zany crazy comedy, but there are like no jokes here, and the few jokes that are identifiable as such don’t really land.

And what’s even weirder is that this has an imdb score of 6.4, which is the highest score that any film can receive. (If it’s higher than that, it means that some Nazi nerd has brigaded the voting, and if it’s much lower, it might be bad.)

Still, it sucks.

Oh, right. It’s 32% on Rotten Tomatoes.

It’s so badly shot that even the scenes that had to have been done on location looks like they’re on a movie back lot. So this confirms my hatred of John Landis films that I didn’t quite know that I had until I saw his directorial list in imdb. It’s not just that this isn’t very funny; it’s ineptly directed.

This blog post is part of the Century series.

Broadway Danny Rose. Woody Allen. 1984.

Yeah, OK, for 1983 it was this is The Search For Spock and I threw the dice and I went for this one.

Allen had like an Imperial period where he could do no wrong, and this is towards the end of that period. And when he’s on screen here being embarrasing and embarrassed, it really works. He’s funny. But the other scenes where he’s being a Robert Altmanesque (with a pinch of Cassavetes) director and trying to have the other actors be in that imagined film… It just doesn’t work. Altman has (well, can have) such a wonderful hand at directing people behaving naturalistic, but those scenes here scream ACTING.

You can just look at their faces rehearsing their lines in their minds while the person they’re talking to is mouthing off their own lines.

The exception is Mia Farrow, who is amazing.

The plot (and the framing of the plot) is impressive. It’s like clockwork. You can’t help getting involved.

Is this peak Woody Allen?

This blog post is part of the Century series.

The Man With Two Brains. Carl Reiner. 1983.

Oh my Emacs! This is so stupid. In the best way possible.

I must have seen this before at some point, because so many scenes were familiar, like the Hufhurr thing, but it’s been a while. And I guess a lot of the jokes haven’t aged well (like the orderlies shaving the genital hair of the patient before brain surgery, and on and on). It’s a profoundly creepy film, but…

There are just so many good one-liners and bits. I laughed and I laughed.

But in addition to the general misogynistic creepiness, it just has some pacing problems. It portions out the hilarious parts carefully, and the more plot-related bits aren’t that well done.

This blog post is part of the Century series.