Reviews

This, not 2001: A Space Odyssey, was the best science fiction movie to come out in 1968, and remains one of the best ever. What elevates it into a genuine classic is it's literate script, direction, terrific set design, music and cinematography, and finally outstanding performances from a first rate cast. Charlton Heston, as the cynical Colonel George Taylor, delivers his finest performance in a non-epic film, while Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and Maurice Evans make their ape characters plausible and realistic underneath all the makeup they were forced to wear.

What makes the story fascinating is not so much the metaphors about 1960s society that some critics make too much of, but the fascinating odyssey that Heston goes through. At the outset, his Colonel Taylor is a cynical misanthrope who hates everything about his race, which is why he has left 20th Century Earth to find something better than man. Then, when he crashes on a planet of the apes where humans are the animals kept in cages, he finds himself becoming a defender of the species he always felt ashamed to be part of. Only to see it all pulled out from under him again at the shocking climax.

It's too bad that the less than spectacular to downright awful sequels have tended to diminish the high quality of the original Planet Of The Apes movie, which thirty years later still holds up as perhaps the most literate sci-fi film ever made in terms of pure storytelling and character study. "2001" is all metaphor with cardboard characters and no story by contrast.

I was first exposed to this movie when it seemed to air on NBC every six months or so back in the early 80s, and as a result it's hindered my ability to enjoy it as a guilty pleasure on home video, even on widescreen DVD. That's because the TV showings were purposefully padded to two parts with more than an hour of extra footage that in this case places the characters in much better context than they appear in the theatrical version, (don't get me wrong, it doesn't elevate it to a topnotch story, but at least the narrative makes better sense). The biggest revelation upon seeing the theatrical cut was how all of George Kennedy's scenes before the crash weren't there any more.

Even at it's best, Airport 77 is only par for the course as far as disaster movies go. The plot is a little more innovative and the rescue scenes of trying to survive and then get the plane raised are more realistic than what we were served up in Airport 1975 with the stewardess flying the plane. Jack Lemmon does succeed as the nominal lead and that helps make one more charitable toward the rest of the supporting cast which is largely wasted in some classic, stereotyped cliched roles. But towards the end, it starts to drag just a bit. You can also see the beginnings of Jimmy Stewart's declining health since he's basically forced to play his part as though he were appearing as a guest on the Johnny Carson show instead of making his character more distinctive.

The widescreen DVD is worth having but I strongly recommend catching the expanded TV version instead, even if it is panned and scanned.

From a coherent narrative standpoint, "2010" absolutely blows away its somewhat overly lauded predecessor. The plot is understandable, characters behave with normal human emotions instead of being told by a director to act dull, and there are fine performances from several cast members.

However, what makes "2010" a film that ultimately fails is its idiotic obsession with Cold War politics that has not only completely dated the film as a product of the 1980s (Kubrick by contrast wisely avoided all references to the Cold War in "2001" and thus enabled the film to still seem fresh today) but also dates it as an example of silly left-wing "moral equivalence" philosophy which saw the United States as equally bad as the USSR if not worse. One gets the feeling that Hyams is less interested in continuing the speculative look to the future as he is about making a statement about Ronald Reagan by having his unseen President take the world toward WWIII for following a tough foreign policy. It is worth noting that the original novel "2010" contains *none* of this Cold War subplot (Clarke saved his apologia for communism for his dreadful novel "3001") and the blame for this bad story element rests entirely on Hyams's shoulders. Also, there is an inexcusable continuity lapse from the first film where Dr. Floyd indignantly says, "I never authorized anyone to tell HAL about the monolith!" But in "2001", it's abundantly clear that the opposite is true. Since this scene is also tied into making a slam at the U.S. government though, you can't help but wonder if this lapse was deliberate on Hyams's part.

As a look into a future society where space travel is the norm, "2001" still offers possibilities that might happen at a later date (I'm not one of those who buys its philosophy about the evolution of mankind though). Not so "2010", which was rendered permanently dated and absolutely dead wrong for eternity by the world events of 1989-91. That this point isn't recognized widely enough by people is a sad comment on how little we have really learned.

I don't mind watching "2001" on widescreen laser disc, because it is a visually impressive film and fun to utlize the CAV functions with. And after reading enough comments from people and having read the Clarke novel I do "understand" it as much as I guess anyone ever can.

But here is the bottom line. If a movie is supposed to be good, the viewer should not have to figure out what it's all about from a novelization or from the comments of other viewers or through multiple viewings. The story should be clear, coherent and understandable the first time through, or else the filmmaker is gypping the audience as far as I'm concerned. And from a story standpoint, that's exactly what Kubrick does. How in the world is anyone supposed to figure this out the first time through? The narrative is hopelessly muddled, actors are purposefully told to be dull and uncharismatic and show no normal human emotion, and the last twenty minutes is devoted to a giant light show. By contrast, Clarke's novelization had a better moment when Bowman enters the Stargate where he gets to blurt out a last horrified message to Mission Control, "My God it's full of stars!" that even Peter Hyams retained for 2010 because it made more narrative sense. These are the kinds of touches that the film sorely needed. Also bad, was Kubrick's decision to drop Alex North's score in favor of classical music cues. Having played the North cues against where they were intended to go, I think they elevated the film to a level that would have made sequences like the "Dawn Of Man" less tiresome and plodding. Only the Ligeti piece for the monolith should have been retained.

This is an interesting film if you get used to it, but I have to laugh when I keep hearing this ranked as one of the greatest ever. As far as I'm concerned, "2001" isn't even the best science fiction movie of 1968 (that honor belongs to "Planet Of The Apes" which has the vital elements of narrative, plot, characters and good actors that "2001" is woefully deficient in)

With all due respect to the previous viewer, what makes this speculative TV movie so effective is *because* it ends up coming down on the side of the Warren Commission conclusions for the most part, which have been vindicated by all subsequent investigations and serious historical analyses, particularly Gerald Posner in "Case Closed." A priceless moment is when the judge berates Oswald's defense attorney (Lorne Greene) for deliberately injecting a grassy knoll gunman during a shooting demonstration.

Skip "JFK", which is all about making things up out of thin air to fit a biased theory. Watch this instead if you can, along with the 1992 Quantum Leap episode "The Oswald Conspiracy".

Sure, art imitates life too much when you watch this movie knowing all about what went on between Liz and Dick off-camera but that still doesn't diminish the fact that as far as epics go, "Cleopatra", while not in the same class as "Ben Hur" is as good as or better than other quality epics like "Spartacus". Rex Harrison and Roddy McDowall are brilliant as Caesar and the future Caesar Augustus respectively, while Elizabeth Taylor comes off better than you'd be led to believe since she plays the Queen of the Nile less as a sexy vamp and more as a shrewd, calculating practitioner of realpolitik. While Claudette Colbert's take in the DeMille version is infinitely sexier, I have to agree with George MacDonald Fraser who said that Taylor's Cleopatra is probably closer to the real thing.

Less effective is Richard Burton, who seems preoccupied with other things (as we all know!) and gives a performance not as good as his centurion in "The Robe." Also jarring is to see Caroll O'Connor as Casca, one of Caesar's assassins. Granted, who knew at the time he would later become Archie Bunker, but still.....

Alex North contributes the best score never to be given a legitimate CD release, while the sets, costumes and backdrops are so exquisite that in the end you can't help but think that if ancient Rome and Egypt wasn't like this, it *ought* to have been. The makers of this film are to be commended for having overcome a lot of adversity and off-camera hijinks to still turn out what remains a very good film and worth a look at especially in the environment of home video where one doesn't need a single setting (But do try to find the widescreen laser disc or else it's not worth it).

OHMSS may very well be the best single Bond movie of them all. This was the last Bond movie to retain the bulk of a Fleming novel and like the early Connery films did it while creatively adding the appropriate amounts of wit and style that the novels always lacked. But what elevates this above even the great movies of "Dr. No" through "Thunderball" is that for the first time Bond gets to be more human and more believable as a person, falling in love for the first time.

The acting is first-rate. Telly Savalas is the best of the three Blofelds depicted (though not quite the image of what the unseen Blofeld in "From Russia With Love" and "Thunderball" conjured in the mind), showing a physical process and ruthlessness that Donald Pleasance and Charles Gray never had. And Diana Rigg, in a role borrowing elements from her wonderful Emma Peel character, may well be the best Bond girl of them all. It's easy to see why 007 would want to break his ways with women and settle down with her.

Which brings us now to George Lazenby. He's a bit rough around the edges, but I really think his inexperience and slight awkwardness is an asset in this movie where Bond is supposed to be more human, more believable and falling in love. I really can not envision Sean Connery in this movie. We ought to remember that Connery gave a poor performance in the film prior to this ("You Only Live Twice") and I really don't think he would have been capable in moving his interpretation of Bond to the different level required by the script of OHMSS. Frankly, I could more easily envision Roger Moore or Pierce Brosnan handling this film than I ever could Connery.

Back to Lazenby though. I think he would have grown into the role and been accepted over time as a worthy successor to Connery. It's unfortunate that he heeded the bad advice of friends and bowed out of the series, thereby wrecking his career for good (and all the more unfortunate that his departure and Connery's one-shot return made the producers not directly deal with Bond's desire for revenge in the next film, "Diamonds Are Forever") In the end, George Lazenby is what helps make OHMSS a good film, and combined with the other ingredients of Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas, screenwriter Richard Maibaum and director Peter Hunt, makes it in all likelihood the best of all the James Bond movies.

Every James Bond film starting with "Dr. No" through "Thunderball" IMO kept getting better and better in more ways than one. In "You Only Live Twice", the fifth Bond film, the series took it's first step backward. While YOLT is still entertaining it is by far the weakest of all the Connery Bonds. His disinterest with the part is all too evident and he just seems to be going through the motions.

But Connery's bored performance isn't the only problem. YOLT was the first Bond movie to jettison most of the original story of a Fleming novel and the new story by screenwriter Roald Dahl gets hopelessly bogged down at one point during the entire sequence at the ninja school. Donald Pleasance, the first actor to portray Ernst Stavro Blofeld on-camera, is a disappointment, failing to evoke the menace that the hidden Anthony Dawson generated in "From Russia With Love" and "Thunderball." (though in fairness, Pleasance was a last minute replacement). Also, there really isn't a strong Bond girl this time out with the "sacrificial lamb" Aki getting bumped off two-thirds of the way in, and the theoretical lead Bond girl, Kissy Suzuki not even named once in the film!

On the plus side, Karin Dor is wickedly sexy as SPECTRE assassin Helga Brandt (I think she's better than Luciana Paluzzi in "Thunderball" who played a similar character) and it's also nice to see the long-suffering Miss Moneypenny (Lois Maxwell) get the last word in for a change at the tag of the film. There's also some wonderful cinematography of Japan that conveys the rich, travelogue experience Bond films are so noted for. All that's really missing are the right elements of story and effective villain (and a good performance from Bond!)

I'm not much of a fan of Dudley Moore, but this early effort of his is a laugh-filled riot all the way through. The film manages to avoid the more offensive irreverent tone that later films like "Life Of Brian" were filled with. Even if the film were bad though, Raquel Welch's two scenes would more than justify the viewing experience.

This film has been imitated, ripped-off and unsuccessfully remade, and every one of them only serves to further enhance what a wonderful movie this is. Peter Stone's screenplay is vastly superior to the original John Godey novel, adding better characterizations and a healthy dose of wit (the scenes involving the bedridden mayor and his aides is a hilarious indictment of New York City bureaucracy; also priceless is Walter Matthau's reaction when he realizes the Chief Inspector is black). This is one movie where the occasional excesses of profanity seem natural and understandable, and not gratuitous. But then again, this film has an air of pseudo-believability which none of it's imitators like "Speed" have ever possessed. There is no girlfriend or wife of the police lieutenant on the train to complicate things; there is no cliche ridden invented romance on the fly; there is no heroic stopping of the train through a death-defying feat by the lead. You just get the sense of how the real-life professionals would try to respond to a crisis like this.

Robert Shaw, in his last role before "Jaws", shows what a wonderful actor he was as the ringleader of the hijackers. It is cold, methodical villainy at its finest.

Hard to believe that just four years before this hideous mess, Steven Spielberg made one of the greatest movies ever in "Jaws." "1941" purports to a comedy, but except for the scene with Slim Pickens on the Japanese sub I watched this movie in stone-faced silence. What is so offensive about this movie is that Spielberg seems determined to go out of his way to show only *Americans* as silly idiots, whereas the Japanese sub crew is depicted as smarter, filled with honor and even wise enough to dispose of the token Nazi all by themselves (a trait which was lacking in every member of the Japanese government and military, all of whom were equally as brutal as their Nazi counterparts), and are allowed to get away in the end unscathed. I was still waiting to at least see the sub get theirs in the end (which would have made me at least come away learning to respect the film as a comic spoof), but no they're allowed to return while the closing shot is a gratuitous slam at the idea of American wartime unity. Film critic Richard Grenier put it best when he said, "The problem with the movie was that there were these Japanese who had just sunk a large part of the Pacific Fleet, There was a real war. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed. Spielberg had forgotten about that."

If I want to see WWII comedy, I'd rather watch reruns of "Hogan's Heroes" and "McHale's Navy" which at least never forgot which side was the sillier one more worthy of being parodied. "1941" has eyepopping sets and visual effects, but that only makes it no different than the largely witless "Casino Royale" of a decade earlier (that film at least is more interesting as a 60s curio).

Never before and never since has there been a more wonderful Tarzan movie than this one. While the first Weismuller Tarzan movie, "Tarzan The Ape Man" is required viewing before seeing this one, "Tarzan And His Mate" is the only one to watch if you have to pick just one Tarzan movie. The film delivers in action, excitement and romance on a grand level with Maureen O'Sullivan looking absolutely sexy in her abbreviated costume as Jane. Unfortunately, the iron hand of the Hays Office forced all subsequent Weismuller-O'Sullivan Tarzan films to be toned down in the romance department (with O'Sullivan getting more conservative wardrobe) and the series never came close to this film again. Highly recommended.

When I purchased the laser disc version of this movie and got a chance to experience the only existing portions of the cut sequences in the supplementary materials (audio only for the "Upside Down Room" segment; Video with no sound for "The Naked Honeymooners" segment) I sadly realized that we had lost the chance for a truly classic movie that would have gone down as the best Holmes movie of all time. What remains is still entertaining but in the end is only an echo of what the original vision had been.

I enjoy the performances of Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely and the rest of the cast (save for whoever plays Queen Victoria as a total buffoon!) but the cut sequences clearly lent more depth to each character. The frustrating thing about the standard version is that we really don't get a chance to see Stephens play Holmes in any scenes where Holmes utilizes his powers of deduction and intellect. By contrast, the audio fragment of the cut train sequence that was to have opened the film gave Stephens a chance to show off Holmes the master of deduction and at least establish the traditional version of Holmes in the audience's eyes before getting on with the more complex tale. It is probably the one cut segment I miss the most. Also, reviewers who talk about the perceived sexual ambiguity of Stephens's Holmes should be aware that the original version contained no such ambiguities. A flashback scene to Holmes's student days that was also cut makes it quite clear that Holmes is a heterosexual who was traumatized when a girl he admired turned out to be a prostitute.

It's a pity that all of the elements weren't found to make a complete restoration of this movie possible. Perhaps some day a file the producers of the laser disc missed will turn up the missing elements needed to at last make this film the classic it should have been.

Whittaker Chambers, the greatest anti-communist thinker of this century, once wrote that he opposed Joseph McCarthy because he saw his reckless antics as a long-term menace for the cause of anti-communism. That same kind of philosophy is really at the heart of the "Manchurian Candidate", one of the most effective political thrillers ever made. Frank Sinatra delivers his finest acting performance and there is all kinds of dramatic tension right up to the last moment. Fine performances also from Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey.

Less effective is Janet Leigh's somewhat pointless role as Sinatra's girlfriend (when I first saw this movie in 1988, I thought for a moment that they were setting her up to be a Soviet spy, just like one of the other reviewers here thought, but now I see that they just really put her in as window dressing). Also ineffective is John McGiver as the "good" liberal senator, who frankly comes across just as self-righteously arrogant as James Gregory's red-baiting McCarthy clone (Gregory I should note almost seems like a malevolent version of his Inspector Lugar character from "Barney Miller" a decade later. The bumbling mannerisms are almost identical).

The merits still outweigh the flaws. A definite must-see!

The original Star Wars is one of the truly great films of all time because it manages to be space/action epic in the tradition of the epic films of the 50s and early 60s that had largely gone dormant in the 70s up to this point (save for the disaster films). But what really makes it shine is that this is the only film of the trilogy where there seems to be more emphasis on story, characters, and achieving a gritty kind of realism that starts to slip away in Empire Strikes Back and by ROTJ, with its overabundance of Muppet Show rejects in every corner, is almost eclipsed completely and everyone else from Harrison Ford on down seems to be coasting.

It is because of this that I prefer the original version and not the special edition, which to me epitomizes every annoying wrong turn that took place over the next two films. The very fact that Lucas felt it was more important to spend millions of dollars putting back a very redundant and pointless Jabba scene (all Jabba and Han do is repeat the same dialogue Han had with Greedo earlier!) and changing the look of background scenery while leaving all of the Tatooine scenes involving Luke and his friend Biggs on the cutting room floor should prove once and for all that for Lucas, special effects takes precedence over character development and depth.

Star Wars also stands above the sequels in that it has the best performances in the series. The dignity that Alec Guinness brings to the part of Ben Kenobi is enough to make you take seriously the idea of the Jedi and the Force. By contrast, when we heard the same ideas spring from a Muppet with Grover of Sesame Street's voice in the next two films, the whole thing just sounded silly. Also, it's high time that the late Peter Cushing get some greater recognition for the cool, slimy villainy he projects as Governor Tarkin.

I continue to enjoy watching the Star Wars trilogy in their original forms, but I am definitely not a Star Wars junkie. The series reached an apex in the first film, and while subsequent films are entertaining they'll never top the original.

I'm not one of those critics of ROTJ who hates the movie, but I do think it's quite obvious that when you watch the three movies together it's clear that the entire storyline that was established so wonderfully in Star Wars, is just coasting to a finish here instead of soaring to a powerful climax.

I have always been convinced that what elevates "Star Wars" above either of the two sequels is the fact that it was the only one of the three films where Lucas seemed to be equally concerned about story development as he was about FX. The trend toward FX over story starts to intrude in Empire, but in ROTJ it really sticks out like a sore thumb. Lucas it seems spent more time concerned about showing a more elaborate cantina scene in Jabba's palace than he was about pacing a coherent and credible storyline. Luke and Leia brother and sister? Boy, does that make you go back and look at the original in a somewhat uncomfortable light. This was something that required more explanation and a bit more depth. And don't even make me comment on the Ewoks, the single most idiotic concept of the entire Trilogy. The manner in which they so easily beat a trained Imperial Army is enough to make you want to start rooting for the other side!

The acting is also not up to snuff this time. Ford is just coasting along, and Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor demonstrates how overly cartoonish the proceedings are getting. All one has to do is compare McDiarmid's caricature performance with Peter Cushing's cool, restrained villainy as Moff Tarkin in Star Wars to realize what was missing this time out. *That's* what the Emperor should have been like.

Of course, Carrie Fisher in that metal bikini is always enough to compensate for any of the film's shortcomings in the final analysis. :) Jedi in the end works, but it's not an improvement over it's origins. It's just coasted in because of the past glories that preceded it.

"Goldeneye" erased all painful memories of the horrible Dalton films. It had a great story, great characters and the best Bond girl in decades in Izabella Scorupco. "Tomorrow Never Dies" alas, is a giant step backwards. We get a half-baked retread of the plot of "The Spy Who Loved Me", dumbed down this time (just as "A View To A Kill" was a dumbed-down retread of "Goldfinger") and we are also given the worst Bond girl ever next to Tanya Roberts. I found Michelle Yeoh completely unattractive and also an annoying pain in the behind with her over-the-top martial arts bits. Indeed, my favorite moment was when the villain, Jonathan Pryce did a sarcastic imitation of her silly theatrics.

Leaving aside the fact that the villain's plot is unbelievably ridiculous (this guy wants WWIII just for exclusive TV rights? Please! Give me a Blofeld or Stromberg who just wants money or the desire to remake the world in his own image any day), I also find it disconcerting to see that the producers of this film think that 007 ought to be paired up with someone from the Chinese side in an era when the Chinese are increasingly calling attention to themselves for their contemptible human rights record. The teaming up with a Soviet agent in "The Spy Who Loved Me" at least made some sense during the "detente" era, but I see no reason for it this time. If anything, the Chinese ought to be prime candidates for the bad guys now and it's a pity that there's still squeamishness about that.

Alas, since "Octopussy" we have now had four misfires out of the last five Bond films. Better luck next time in "The World Is Not Enough" (I hope).

For me, the EON Bond's hit a high-water mark in "Octopussy", which was Roger Moore's best outing as 007. Then, Roger stuck around for one film too many in "A View To A Kill", which was not so good, and then we got stuck with Timothy Dalton's two movies which culminated with the worst Bond movie ever made ("Licence To Kill") and the near-destruction of the entire Bond movie franchise.

It was therefore a joy when I saw "Goldeneye" to realize that at last, Bond was back in a new exciting era of films. Pierce Brosnan does a fine job his first time out, playing Bond in the Connery mold with enough touches of Moore's style and charm to elevate him light years ahead of Dalton. Add to that, a great supporting cast, the best Bond girl in two decades in Izabella Scorupco and an entertaining story and you have the best Bond film since "Octopussy" and one of the best overall. I loved it from beginning to end, with the only blemish being Eric Serra's absolutely awful score (the title song was okay though). Unfortunately, the high quality of this film wasn't followed up in "Tomorrow Never Dies" (save for an improvement in the music). I'm hoping that "The World Is Not Enough" will emulate "Goldeneye" more, and indeed with Robbie Coltrane's character from this film slated as the upcoming villain, that may well turn out to be the case.

But no matter what happens, Pierce Brosnan has at least done one Bond film I will always return to and enjoy again and again.

As a comedy/satire of 007, "Casino Royale" doesn't work. A lot of the gags fall flat and there is no coherence to the story whatsoever (the result of five directors credited, and God only knows how many other uncredited directors and screenwriters etc.) Even Peter Sellers, the last great comic genius there ever was doesn't generate one tenth of the laughs he normally does (Woody Allen though, is perfect and hilarious. He should have had more screen time).

So why then do I keep watching this film anyway? Only because "Casino Royale" is one of the most fascinating curios of 1960s psychedelia I've ever seen. What it lacks in wit, it more than compensates with eyepopping sets, FX, women etc. that at least keeps you fascinated (maybe like a train wreck) if not laughing all the time. If one isn't interested in cultural nostalgia though, "Casino Royale" is pretty much a waste of time. Without that dimension, the film is nothing.

A couple trivia notes. Angela Scoular, one of M's "daughters" turned up in the next legit Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" as one of Blofeld's patients. David Niven, the "real" Bond had also been on Albert Broccoli's and Harry Saltzman's wish list of big name stars when they first planned the Bond series, since they saw Niven as the ultimate embodiment of the way Ian Fleming described 007.

When I first read Walter Lord's magnificent "A Night To Remember" in 1978 at the age of 9, I began a love affair with the story of the Titanic and her people that continues to this day, and it is partly responsible for my being a professional historian today. It is because of that, that there have been few nights as disappointing to me as the one and only time I saw this movie.

Yes, the technical details are brilliant, but the bottom line for any movie must be its story and characters and the manner in which James Cameron exploited the tragedy of the Titanic to tell a cheap, third-rate story of horny teenage lust that is far worse than the tawdry soap opera of the 1996 CBS miniseries "Titanic" continues to offend me to this day.

It is not the fact that James Cameron told a fictional story at the expense of compelling real history like the Californian incident that offends me so much, it's the fact that this is a *bad* fictional story. No one aboard the real Titanic had a situation remotely resembling the one of Jack and Rose. Why couldn't Cameron have told a fictional story revolving around something real and representative of what was on the Titanic? If he wanted to do a class barrier romance, then why not have Jack be an honest Irish immigrant out to make a fortune in America (as so many of Titanic's steerage were) instead of some loser-drifter in life who couldn't make an honest living in the real world beyond Titanic? (Jack strikes me as the working class Gaylord Ravenal. Someone who in ten years is going to be just as bad as Cal is) Or better still, why not a story of a young newlywed couple that was parted by the tragedy? God knows there were plenty of those couples aboard Titanic, but I guess in this day and age of Hollywood morals, "true love" can not exist between a married couple, thus rendering that idea politically incorrect in James Cameron's eyes. And so we get the false dichotomy in which a person's capacity to love is measured by his poverty, a message that is not only stupid in and of itself but also false to the reality of what was on Titanic (one need only point to the true love that existed between the Strauses, who perhaps not coincidentally had all their key scenes left on the cutting room floor).

There is so much more I could rant about (the demeaning depictions of First Officer Murdoch and Molly Brown also come to mind), but the bottom line is that as a Titanic enthusiast I feel disgusted that James Cameron has hijacked any hope that one day someone could make a movie about the Titanic with modern technology that did justice to her, just as "A Night To Remember" so brilliantly did in 1958. For me, "A Night To Remember" and the 1979 TV-movie "SOS Titanic" remain the definitive Titanic movies and should be seen as antidotes to this horrid mess.

I continue to be impressed at how the original "Godzilla" still holds up very well as an eerie horror/monster flick today, and praise must be given to all elements of the technical crew who worked on it. Comparing it to the American movie that directly inspired it, Ray Harryhausen's "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" makes you see why "Godzilla" can still seem scary today while Harryhausen's is just fun without being menacing. The documentary style filming, the black and white photography, effective Akira Ifukube score and fluid motion of the monster jells together in a way that no other Godzilla movie, straight or campy ever matches.

It is fashionable to call the American added scenes with Raymond Burr an annoying intrusion, but compared to other intrusive American elements in later Japanese sci-fi movies, it's remarkable how Burr actually manages to fit in quite seamlessly with less bad dubbing than we later saw in other Godzilla films. He also handles the material a lot better than any other American actor who tried a hand at these films years later like Nick Adams or Russ Tamblyn.

As for the anti-nuclear allegory of Godzilla, I tend to ignore this point when enjoying this film because I'm one of those who think the Japanese could use a little reminder that their firsthand experience of nuclear terror only happened because of some bigger terrors that took place first at places like Nanking and Pearl Harbor.

Forget the bloated misfire of last year's American effort and enjoy the original (Godzilla's roar can still induce nightmares among the grown-ups). It's still the king!

The premise of the movie is fascinating, though nowhere near as imaginative as "The Time Machine" (watch for the stock shot from that movie during Wells' trip into the past of the overhead ceiling). What ultimately undermines it and makes it hard to take is a badly constructed story. By the time I was through with the movie, I had too many questions on my mind. How did Jack the Ripper get away from the hospital after being almost run over and how could there have been a John Doe corpse there when Wells goes to check on him? Why is Amy dumb enough to take a sleeping pill when she needs to keep her eye on the clock? Why does the police lieutenant let Wells go after the murder takes place, when he should have held him for more questioning about his prescience? Just what *did* Wells do there at the end with the Ripper, because I sure as heck found that development from way out of left field.

It's probably no coincidence that all this illogic during a time travel jaunt in modern San Francisco comes from the pen of Nicholas Meyer, who repeated the same mistakes again a decade later in his script for Star Trek IV.

I loved the old Star Trek series, and I loved Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. My negative reaction to Star Trek IV set off a tone of hostility towards all new Star Trek projects that continues to this day. I bailed out of "Next Generation" halfway through the first episode because I was bored to death and never watched another one again.

For reasons I can't fathom, I decided to rent this movie and see if there was something I could warm up to this time. Alas, my terminal boredom with Trek only remains after yawning my way through this mishmash. And every story I've heard of how "Next Generation" tried to give lessons in PC week after week was proved correct with Picard and his nonsensical story about how money is gone in the future and how a Utopia now exists blah, blah, blah where no one pursues wealth. Evidently, the events of 1989 never happened in this pathetic vision of the future.

About the only thing I can say in its defense is that the concern for keeping history straight is handled far better than the cavalier disregard shown by the old crew in the horrible Star Trek IV, but even then I would point out to the producers that the Zefrem Cochran of the old episode "Metamorphosis" was from Alpha Centauri, not Earth, and he never heard of the Federation or saw a Vulcan, so even this attempt to provide a bridge to the old series fell flat with me.

"Trek" has become too big a phenomenon and has failed to produce a single interesting story since Star Trek II. It ought to finally be put to sleep for good.

This movie marked the death of quality in Star Trek, and as far as I'm concerned it still hasn't recovered thirteen years and five movies and three more television series later. So much promise existed after the wonderful movie that was "Star Trek II" and it was all thrown away first in Trek III (a very ridiculous story designed to get Spock alive again and undo what made II so poignant) and then in this film where all sense of serious storytelling is thrown out the window for some silly laughs mixed in with discourses of political correctness about whales. On top of that, consistency is thrown out the window with a number of plot holes and illogical developments that don't mesh with what was established in the last two films and even worse James Horner's wonderful music is replaced further lending to the sense of inconsistency.

This marked the end of my love of Star Trek. Fortunately I'll always have the original series and the second movie to go back to.