2009 / 118 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
A man and a woman meet (covertly). They check into a hotel room, glancing over their shoulders to assure that no one they know has seen them. Once inside that room, after indulging in some sexual hanky-panky, the woman expresses her concern over what the two of them are doing. She is worried about being caught. She is guilty over cuckolding another woman. The man tells her that she needn’t worry, that his marriage is a mess/sham, that the moments he spends with his mistress are the best moments of his miserable life. We’ve seen this scene a hundred times if we’ve seen it once. In this case, however, the other woman and the adulterous man were married for almost twenty years and have been divorced for ten.
2009 / 158 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
According to the Mayan calendar, the world has an expiration date and that date is 12-21-2012, a little over three years from now. So, what can we expect on that foreboding date? Roland Emmerich, the same helpful documentarian who illustrated what we could expect from Global Warming in “The Day After Tomorrow” (apparently waves, snow and tornadoes) and told us how the Pyramids were built in both “10,000 BC” and “Stargate” has answered that question for us in his informative new film, “2012″. Apparently, there will be earthquakes, waves (again) and gigantic volcanoes. I’m not sure exactly what we’re supposed to do in order to prepare for this cluster of mega-cataclysms, but it appears that we should have spent more time and effort finding habitable planets and building spaceships to get to them. Unless we make major advances in space travel in the next three years, it seems we’re pretty well screwed.
In at least one podcast, I speculated that Quentin Tarantino has disappeared up his own ass. This disturbing trend started with “Kill Bill Vol. 2″, a movie I still loved by the way. It was highly entertaining, but while Quentin usually fills his movies with talk, the quality of the talk seemed to be dropping a bit. Though Tarantino’s dialogue largely retained the snap and crackle upon which his reputation was originally built, it seemed that he was too in love with the sound of his own words to excise any of them. This problem worsened in Quentin’s next film: “Death Proof”. While I still enjoyed the film (it’s pretty dull until the last forty-five minutes or so), the crackling Tarantino banter had instead been replaced by endless film fanatic prattle. The things that the characters in “Death Proof” were saying never seemed like anything the characters in “Death Proof” would say, they only sounded like something Quentin Tarantino would say (how many young women do you know who sit around bars discussing obscure pop songs and old movies…I know none). The movie seemed self-involved, self-important and, worst of all, mostly boring.
2009 / 126 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
“Star Trek” was once an eternal commodity. Though originally cancelled, it had lived on to become a movie, another TV show (”Star Trek: Next Generation”), a prequel (”Star Trek: Enterprise”) and pretty much everything else. But, in recent years, it had grown stodgy, stale and, if my memory of “Star Trek: Nemesis” serves, kind of ludicrous. Though it once achieved a mass market appeal, it had recently returned to the margins. It was beloved by the geeks and science teachers that had loved it in the first place, but few others. “Lord of the Rings” once lingered in this pop culture ghetto, until a nerd from New Zealand filled it with bad-ass special effects and sword fights and made the world fall in love with it . Before 2000, I only knew a handful of people who knew who the hell Frodo Baggins was, now EVERYONE does.
Well, “Star Trek” fans, your day has come. Prepare for everyone to care about warp drives and Prime Directives because J.J. Abrams has rebooted the “Star Trek” franchise and brought about your worst nightmare: “Star Trek” is finally cool. The end is nigh, people, start stocking up on canned food and shotguns.
1989 / 107 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
I wanted to like this movie. I really, really did. I popped it into my DVD Player and thought: it can’t possibly be as bad as everyone says. In fact, I bet it’s a diamond in the rough, a forgotten treasure, a film unfairly maligned because it follows on the coattails of a very successful, beloved and fun film.
1986 / 118 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
Making feature films within the “Star Trek” universe has always, arguably, been about broadening the “Trek” fan base. That base began with a small, devoted cult that lamented the early demise of the original TV series. Others were indoctrinated through late night syndicated broadcasts and their ranks swelled enough that someone at Paramount smelled money and decided to take “Trek” out of mothballs and onto the big screen. Despite the relative financial disappointment of the first film, they still sensed the potential…and the success of “Khan” proved them right. Even if one hadn’t seen the original series and wasn’t familiar with the characters, “Khan” was an engrossing film and quite a profitable one (it cost $11 million to make and made $14 million in its opening weekend ALONE). Hence “The Search for Spock”, a film that disappointed nearly everyone and, while it made more than “ST: TMP”, failed to rival the stellar box office of “Khan”. Therefore, it was time to go back to the drawing board, so to speak. If Paramount wanted to make more money, they once again had to broaden Trek’s appeal.
1984 / 105 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
Poor Leonard (Lennie?) Nimoy. Where Shatner has a thriving career making cameos, doing Priceline ads, recording questionable albums (though, truth be told, his most recent album isn’t half bad), and starring in several television series (”Tonight on Rescue…Nine…One…One”) aside from his iconic role in “Star Trek”, what does Old Pointy Ears have to his credit? One questionable single (a song about Bilbo Baggins that can be seen below and a book consisting of nude photos of fat ladies. Ah, but there is one other achievement Spock has under his belt: a mediocre directorial career!
1982 / 116 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
It ranks right up there with the greatest images in motion picture history, I’m not even kidding. Right up there with Omar Sharif emerging from the endless desert in “Lawrence of Arabia”, with a giant pair of lips uttering the word “Rosebud” right before a snow globe shatters in “Citizen Kane”, with the whole damn ending of “Casablanca” and that huge ship passing over the camera at the beginning of “Star Wars: A New Hope”. Just below all those others is where you’ll find Shatner, his face filling the entire frame, his lips quivering with almost unimaginable rage and hate, his toupee floundering atop his skull like a dying fish, his entire face contorted with unspeakable rage as he bellows one single word at the top of his lungs. That word, of course, is “Khaaaaaaannn!” Before you dispute me, watch that scene again. There is a passion and a gloriously outsized intensity on display in this single scene that has perhaps never been matched in the history of cinema. I don’t think I’ve ever seen ANYONE in a movie this purely and righteously pissed off.
1979 / 136 Minutes / PG
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz
For years my path to attaining true geekhood has been blocked by only one thing: I just can’t get into “Star Trek”. I’m not sure why it is, but I’ve watched several episodes of the show and while I find it captivating at times, I’m mostly just staring at the television in boredom, wondering how some people can find so much joy in something I find so hokey and lame. I mean, I like sci-fi. And I certainly admire the antics of William Shatner. But with a few exceptions (the half of the “Tribbles” episode I’ve seen, “Star Trek: First Contact”) I remain unimpressed. It is said that you are either a “Star Wars” person or a “Trek” person. Perhaps that explains it. I’ve always, ALWAYS loved “Star Wars”. My earliest pop culture memories involve begging my parents or grandparents for “Star Wars” action figures (according to my father, I once lost Chewbacca and was inconsolable until they stopped everything, made a trip to the store, and purchased a new one). If it’s an “either/or” thing, then I made my decision about seventeen years ago and “Star Trek” never stood a chance.
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(1 votes, average: 3 out of 4)
(5 votes, average: 3.6 out of 4)
