TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

📚 Imbalance by V.E. Mitchell

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35/2023 – ⭐️⭐️

This one starts with an interesting premise, as the Enterprise is sent to negotiate with aliens only briefly encountered before, the Jarada (the unseen, highly demanding aliens that were the B story in “The Big Goodbye”). But while there are hints of an interesting society, the rest of the book doesn’t hold together well. Actions are taken by the aliens that are never really explained, and Enterprise characters are either reduced to repetitious mannerisms (Dr. Crusher brushes locks of her flaming red hair out of her face nearly every time she’s mentioned) or simply badly portrayed (I know Keiko and O’Brien have difficulties, but in this book they’re both rendered nearly incompetent by their insecurities). Toss on a rather abrupt end to the whole thing, and this is one I wasn’t disappointed to reach the end of.

Me holding Imbalance

🎥 Invitation to a Murder

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Invitation to a Murder (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This starts as a very fun homage to Agatha Christie movies, with a very 10 Little Indians basic setup and a lot of other classic Christie tropes wrapped up all together. But somehow by the end it just sort of feels like it fizzles out, with the final resolution depending on some things that felt very out of place and anachronistic. Mostly a lot of fun, but needed a better way to wrap things up at the end.

More spolieriffic details follow…

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🎥 Renfield

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Renfield (2023): ⭐️⭐️

Almost gets three stars, because it was entertaining, and really, how high were anyone’s actual expectations for this? But though I enjoy the cast, Cage is just as ridiculous as you’d expect him to be, Hoult somehow (very amusingly) channels 90s era Hugh Grant (seriously, Renfield Nicholas Hoult : 90s Hugh Grant :: Heathers Christian Slater : 70s Jack Nicholson), and there are a lot of clever lines that made me laugh, the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. The editing during the fight scenes is far too quick and choppy, resulting in fights that are sometimes hard to track and often give the impression that the fight choreography just wasn’t there and they had to try to save them through the editing. And the decision to go with 70s-martial-arts/horror-style over-the-top fountains of gushing blood somehow didn’t quite work for me. I don’t regret watching this, but it’s not one I’ll ever have much need to watch again.

Turn on the lights!

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This YouTube video shows how impressive of a job the Strange New Worlds/Lower Decks crossover did with reworking the opening credits in the Lower Decks style.

But part of what stands out to me is how well this highlights how woefully under-lit the live-action Enterprise is. There’s a ton of detail in the animated version that I’m sure is drawn directly from the live-action version (especially since, really, they’re both animated versions, just in different styles), and it’s gorgeous!

I understand that it’s a stylistic choice on the new shows (Discovery and Picard also did this a lot) to go for more “natural”/”realistic” lighting on their ships, and a ship traveling through deep space isn’t likely to have a convenient light source nearby to make it all pretty and shiny.

But — spoiler alert — none of this is real! (I know, I know, I struggle with this as well.) I’m entirely okay with adding “we can actually see the ships even when they’re in space” to the same base-level suspension of disbelief necessary for enjoying visual science fiction in general.

Update: Thanks to @kamartino@mastodon.online for pointing me to this video from Douglas Trumbull where he discusses directing the space dock sequence in The Motion Picture. At four minutes in, he specifically notes that they wanted to create a lighting design so that the Enterprise appeared to light itself, so even when the Enterprise was out in deep space, it would still be visible.

🎥 Barbie

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Barbie (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d be excited enough about a Barbie movie to see it on opening day, or that I’d come out of it this impressed, I’d have likely laughed and waited to wake up so I could tell you about the weird dream I’d just had.

However, the marketing has been spot-on, the articles have been intriguing, and the reviews have been excellent (well, most of them — but if every review is positive except those from right-leaning organizations or people, I consider that a good sign), so off we went.

And it absolutely lived up to and surpassed my expectations. It’s an impressive veneer of completely over-the-top ridiculousness laid over a remarkably aware, intelligent, and subversive core. Even after having read several articles with the general theme of “how did this even get made?’, you still walk out of it wondering how they managed to do it. It’s a bubblegum pink, glittery explosion of everything that makes todays political right explode, it’s wonderfully aware of that, and it pokes at them with great glee.

I don’t want to say too much more, because really, the less you know about the overall plot or the specific gags, the more fun it will be. If you’re at all curious, it’s well worth seeing. And if you think you aren’t curious because it’s Barbie, well, get over yourself and give it a go.

Year 50 Day 80

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My wife and I sitting in front of a poster for the Barbie movie. I'm wearing black shorts and a black t-shirt with a pink skull and crossbones and bright pink Converse, my wife is wearing a pink sweater over a black top and skirt and light pink Converse.

Day 80: I’ll say a little more in a separate post, but in brief, Barbie is excellent. The less you know going in, the better, but even if you’ve been reading reviews and articles about it, there’s so much in here that will surprise you. If you’re even remotely curious, it’s worth your time.

🎥 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

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Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (2023): ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tom Cruise may be something of a bizarre personality, but he and the people he works with sure know how to put together a great, big, ridiculous summer action movie.

While I’d watched the trailers a while ago, I must not have paid that much attention to them, as I didn’t realize (remember) that both Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff were in this; both of whom, of course, I’m most familiar with from the Marvel universe. Both are fun additions to the franchise; Atwell as a thief who gets pulled into the general shenanigans, and Klementieff as a henchwoman whose absolute glee at the destruction she causes is wonderfully infectious.

The action set pieces, as promised, are a blast. There’s a car chase that even got my wife (notoriously unimpressed by car chases) invested, and a huge set piece on a train that was as close to literally nail-biting as I’ve seen in a long time. And the Big Bad for this film (and the next, since this is a two-part story) is a clever approach, and rather perfectly topical.

The M:I movies may not be “great cinema” — but (with the exception of the second in the franchise) they’re reliable fun, and easily one of the stronger action franchises going right now, and this one keeps it all moving quite handily.

🎥 Missing Link

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Missing Link (2019): ⭐️⭐️⭐️

We realized after seeing the Laika exhibit at MoPOP that there were two films we hadn’t seen yet, so we watched this one today. It’s a fun film, quite cute, and had us snickering pretty regularly. Nothing amazing story wise, but the artistry and craftsmanship of Laika’s work is always worth watching (and fun to see things on screen that we’d just seen on exhibit).

📚 Mere Anarchy by Mike W. Barr et al.

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32/2023 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Originally published as six eBook novellas, this series tracks a single plot line — a natural disaster on a non-Federation planet and the resulting aftermath and recovery — through decades, from just before TOS’s “Where No Man Has Gone Before” to just after the intro of Star Trek: Generations. It makes for a neat look both at the Federation’s long-term approach to working with non-aligned planets (after all, how often have we seen an adventure and then never heard of the planet or culture again?), and how the core TOS crew evolve over the years. This is helped by each novella being written by an author specifically chosen for their expertise in a particular era of Trek history. Definitely one of the stronger Trek omnibus stories I’ve read.

Me holding Mere Anarchy