Movie Night

Well, I had a movie night last night. After i got home from the big family Christmas get-together I put on two of the movies I received: Terminator: Salvation and Star Trek. Here are my thoughts on these films:

Terminator: Salvation

Not the best movie I have ever seen and not the worst by far. Some die-hard Terminator fans would have you believe the movie was worse than having a root canal performed by an elephant. It actually does a pretty good job taking the Terminator franchise out of the "let's run from disguised robots" theme and putting it squarely into the future war scenes we all liked in the original films. I've heard a lot of complaints that this movie doesn't match the look of the future war scenes in the older films, and these complaints are correct-- but this movie is set in the earlier days of the war with the machines and the machines haven't stepped up their game yet. There were some pretty good performances in the movie, and it seemed everyone took their roles seriously. One stand-out performance surprised me; Anton Yelchin in the role of a very young Kyle Reese really made me smile quite a few times in the film. His voice and mannerisms matched Michael Biehn's pretty darn well. I had heard some bad rumors about the ending of the movie, but I'm pleased to say that the rumors were false-- the ending kinda shocked me, but eventually unfolded in a satisfying (although predictable) manner. I'm glad I own it. Now... when Warner Brothers decides to quit being buttholes and release the extended cut on DVD instead of keeping it a Blu Ray exclusive, I'll be extra impressed with the film.

Star Trek

I wanted to hate this movie. Everything about it rubs me the wrong way. I hate remakes. I hate cocky characters. I hate directors who have little respect for a property they are handling-- but once the movie started I was glued to the screen. It is a spectacle... but it's more than that; it's a really darn good movie. It's a little too convenient at times; certain characters happen to meet up at improbable times way too often in the movie. However, I just looked past that because the movie has the same kind of heart that the original series had. They managed to create a Kirk and Spock that you could actually enjoy (even if you do want to beat the snot out of Spock throughout most of the film). The special effects were top-notch, but they really weren't overdone. The fan-references were pretty nicely done-- not the smack-you-over-the-head-with-it type of references in the Star Wars prequels. This was done pretty subtly, and I imagine people will be finding hidden fan-stuff in this film for some time to come. I'm glad this film came along... it made me eat my own words, but I got to enjoy a really, really good movie in the process.