Reviews

This is the second Christmas special for the franchise. In my opinion, it's quite inferior to its predecessor from eight years ago, "Gift of the Night Fury." Neither was scripted by Dean DeBlois, the man behind the three movies, but this one was unnecessary and brought nothing new to the story. Worst of all is that there's poor continuity between this and the epilogue of the final movie. The children's reactions are completely different, as was Toothless's. This lack of consistency made it difficult to reconcile this in the same universe. Watch this only if you're a completist superfan of the franchise. Despite enjoying all three movies, most of the specials and some of the TV episodes, I won't be watching it again myself.

Now this is how to update a classic TV series. If you look closely at the 2005 Battlestar Galactica, you come to the realization of what doing a "reboot" truly means. It means the creator of the new series had absolutely no respect for the original material. He liked so little of it that he threw out the baby with the bath water. Nothing was worth saving except for the barest essentials - character names and the tiniest shred of the premise. The characters themselves were completely unrecognizable. JJ Abrams' Star Trek movies are the same way. Space Battleship Yamato 2199 is the opposite. It's a remake, not a reboot. The difference is they wanted to fix or modernize a few things, but by and large had great affection for the series and kept as much of it intact as they could.

I really wanted to watch the original Star Blazers, as the show was called in the US, but alas, the time slot wasn't cooperative as it conflicted with the school day and consumer VCRs were expensive and rare in 1979, so I couldn't timeshift it. Many years later, I finally had recordings of the show, but couldn't really get more than a few episodes into it before losing interest. Still, I did eventually see the English dub of the Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato movie and enjoyed that. The live action SBY movie from 2010 again left me cold and I don't think I even finished that. If I did, it was so unmemorable that I've forgotten even watching it through to the end. To me, this remake is the best version yet, good enough for me to binge-watch the whole series in a matter of days.

This movie was fine. It's no masterpiece, but I actually found it much more enjoyable than "The Martian," the vaunted 2015 Matt Damon vehicle. That may be somewhat more scientifically accurate - although it still had its share of errors - but it just used people as setpieces for the situation, with no real character development.

I liked Asa Butterfield as the eponymous character in "Ender's Game," and he's just as good here. Before you tag me as an Asa fan, I didn't like him in Scorsese's "Hugo." Here, he was convincing as a Mars-born child with his childlike, guileless naiveté and tall, gangly build. One professional critic compared this with "Flight of the Navigator," but Gardner isn't the smartmouth kid like David was in that movie, and Asa is a far, far better actor than Joey Cramer was. Likewise Gary Oldman, some of whose roles I have detested (his Doctor Smith in the awful "Lost in Space") while others like his Commissioner Gordon in Nolan's Batman movies were fine. The critics think he was over the top as billionaire mogul Nathaniel Shepard, but I found him to be a rather plausible mix of Steve Jobs' salesmanship, Elon Musk's arrogance and spaceflight ambitions, and Howard Hughes' fascination with flying and reclusive eccentricity.

You can tell that many of the movie's fiercest critics here have their own agendas, usually trying to prove they're smarter than the writer. All their comments do is reveal their closed minds and often their ignorance. One smart aleck claims Gardner's mother looked 5 months pregnant in the film. The shot where she peers out of the spacecraft window as she cradles her expanding belly was at an indeterminate time sometime after her sonogram two months after launch, possibly right before landing more than seven months after launch. Same person talks about Mars gravity being 2/3rd of Earth's. No, it's 1/3rd. Plus she complains that the Earth's resources are said to be depleted. That phrase was Nathaniel reading from a letter he wrote to the President as a 12-year-old, full of youthful enthusiasm and exaggeration, not stated as actual scientific fact. Another critic tries to look intelligent by saying Mars is four light minutes away. It is at its closest, but the distance isn't constant and is over 22 light minutes at its furthest. (Another genius here claims it's 90 light minutes each way.) The communication with Mars was instantaneous because they clearly plastered "QuantumCom light minute compression" on the comm screens to imply they've figured out how to use quantum entanglement for instant data transfer at interplanetary distances (still inplausible as it's based on a common misconception, but still far less fantastical than laser swords, warp drive, time travel, telepathy, teleportation devices or humanoid aliens attacking to steal our water, oxygen, etc.). Besides, it's a dramatic technique, as waiting minutes between messages with no realtime interaction just isn't very interesting, unless you liked "You've Got Mail." Another critic who claims to be an MD rated the movie 1 star for no other reason than they pronounced a test "TROponin" rather than "tropPOnin" as he preferred, even though the former is in fact the correct pronunciation, as any medical dictionary can confirm. I wouldn't want him as my doctor, or even playing one on TV. One complained that Gardner's mother was too young to be a mission commander, but probably never said the same about the similarly young Jessica Chastain in "The Martian." Another smart guy claimed the spacecraft would have accelerated halfway to Mars, providing gravity all the way, then turned around and decelerated. Anybody with a knowledge of physics would laugh him out of the room after telling him that would require several times more reaction mass (fuel) than the total mass of the entire spacecraft, a physical impossibility. One critic savages the movie for having contemporary products in it. It's a relatively low budget science fiction film, not a $400 million blockbuster. They spent their budget on more important things like CGI effects, spacecraft props, Mars sets and weightlessness effects, not wasting it creating an entire future Earth, and the projections in movies set in the near future like "2001" always turn out looking dated after a few years anyway. You get the idea; the criticisms are generally incredibly petty, nitpicky and often just plain wrong. I can see plenty of scientific and technological mistakes, especially the Dream Chaser spacecraft used at the end, which would need a large booster and a launchpad rather than taking off using its own small rocket engines from a runway. But I accept that this is a movie, not a documentary, and focus on the characters, whom I did like and care about.

Basically, the critiques boil down to "it's for kids!" As someone approaching retirement age, I'd much rather be young at heart than cranky and old in the head.

This movie is typical 1960s family fare, which isn't really a bad thing. It was brought to the screen by producer Ivan Tors, who had somewhat of an obsession with the underwater world. He famously created and produced the Flipper movies and TV show, so the similarity is quite understandable. (He also brought Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges, to the screen and the underwater scenes of the sunken bomber for the James Bond film Thunderball were filmed in his studios.) He was also a vocal advocate for family-friendly programming, which he believed at the time (and many believe now) was in short supply, casting himself in the mold of Walt Disney.

I first saw this as a youngster on a Saturday night movie, probably on ABC or possibly NBC. Only a few years after its theatrical release, it hadn't yet dated badly, even though we had already entered in the cynical post-Woodstock, post-Vietnam era. We kids could still look back at the '60s as a very bright, fun, mod and groovy decade, and this movie brought that all back. This is very much a snapshot of the era, complete with ecological awareness of the oceans. It fit in well in the era of not just Flipper, but also Sealab 2020. Overall, I give it eight stars not really because of the quality of the movie, but mostly for nostalgic value.

The cast was not exactly brimming with movie stars, but they were nevertheless household names, bringing their familiar personas from the little screen to the silver screen. Tony Randall plays the uptight, meticulous father role that likely got him cast as Felix Unger a year later, essentially the same character as Fred Miller with a few neuroses thrown in. Ken Berry plays the clumsy wimp a la Captain Parmenter, with a touch of underhandedness from the evil twin roles he liked to play on occasion. Jim Backus was all money-grubbing blustery blowhard, like Thurston Howell. Berry and Backus also worked together in Wake Me When the War Is Over, a TV movie broadcast only months after this was released. It does drive home just how long ago this movie was that all of the older cast members have left us. It's been 50 years now, and Randall, Janet Leigh, Berry, Backus, Roddy McDowell, Charlotte Rae, Merv Griffin and Harvey Lembeck are all gone, and the younger members of the cast are well into retirement age.

The script was fairly simplistic and repetitive at times, befitting a movie that wouldn't strain the attention span of its younger viewers.

The underwater "action" scenes will be very familiar if you've ever seen Flipper. Exciting for children, but reasonable adults won't get much of a rise out of them. The sharks are Caribbean reef sharks, which almost never attack humans and have never killed one in recent record. In fact, tourists pay good money to swim with Caribbean reef sharks. No sharks were harmed in the filming of the movie. The ones that the dolphins rammed with their noses were fiberglass, not real, and the "blood" gushing from the gills of live ones after the rammings were just food coloring squirted into their mouths.

Like other reviewers here, I saw this as a youngster on a Sunday afternoon in the 1970s. Being a sci-fi fan, I just had to tune in after seeing the title in TV Guide. Even at that tender age, I thought it was bad, but still had just a spark of intrigue. Decades later, I saw it again, and my reaction was much different. Oh, my god.

Watching it as an adult, I see that it's much worse than I thought. The script didn't make much sense, but as bad as the writing was, it could have been barely salvaged had the actors been at all competent. Alas, the four "astronauts" weren't. Go to your community playhouse and you could probably find a more capable cast. They make Jonathan Harris, Bill Mumy and the others on Lost in Space seem positively Emmy-worthy by comparison. And then there's John Carradine. He has more acting skills than all of the other four put together (and then some) but maybe overcompensates for their shortcomings. Whereas they can't act, he overacts, spending his time on screen being portentously Shakespearean, like some Martian King Lear. The film feels like B-movies made ten years earlier, an impression not helped by the fact that they swiped sound effects and musical cues from Forbidden Planet.

I'll always have a fond memory of that first viewing just out of sheer nostalgia, but if you've never seen it and have something better to do with your time, I recommend sparing yourself.

This review is coming from an "old school" viewer of Godzilla and Toho in general. I've seen just about every Godzilla movie there is, from the classic Showa era to the Heisei series to the Millennium films. Plus the Emmerich disaster of 1998 and the 2014 American film. And now this post-Millennium flick.

The film is amazingly loquacious. The characters will talk your ear off. When Godzilla isn't on the screen, they can't seem to go five seconds without more dialogue, almost always exposition. Sometimes, it seems like nobody else would be able to get a word in edgewise, it's so packed. And it's all linear, like some high school debate. I can't recall any time when more than one person was speaking at once. Everybody spoke their lines in turn. While Japanese society may admire hard-edged straight talk, other cultures like America appreciate some coyness, subtlety or just a little deception. Even in the heat of full-fledged battle against the monster, I don't think they go 15 seconds without somebody speaking up. The Japanese writer just didn't know when to shut up and let the visuals do the work, forcing the American writer to match the verbosity in the dub. This is unquestionably a Japanese movie, which explains why it doesn't translate well to other countries.

There's nothing resembling character development. The characters are the same at the end as they were in the beginning of the movie, as two-dimensional as they come. Nobody has learned any life lessons, nobody has changed or grown. By the end, you barely know anything more about any of them, other than one wants to be prime minister of Japan and another wants to be president of the United States, but they had those goals before the movie began. The actors are quite wooden, more than the casts of any previous Godzilla movie. No real emotion seems to emanate from any of them. No terror when Godzilla is close, no heartbreak when victims are killed, no compassion. They're all basically stonefaced throughout the movie, just mouthpieces for stiff, stilted dialogue. Sure, the older movies right up to and including Final Wars had more than a little overacting, but this is going completely in the other direction. Any conflict between characters is nothing more than arguments about whose theory is right, with no real interaction.

Godzilla is purely a CGI construct in this movie, marking a clean break from 62 years of men in a rubber monster suits. They still used an actor for motion capture, although I really don't understand why. It wasn't necessary as Godzilla moves nothing like a human. Good CGI artists, as opposed to technicians, can make completely fabricated creatures move with a grace and fluidity that seems completely realistic. Godzilla himself is completely devoid of any personality or intelligence. He's a mindless force of nature, as he was in the very first film in 1954. Even the Godzilla of Final Wars had more depth than this. For some inexplicable reason, this creature has cartoonish, motionless button eyes with lots of white rather than the slitted, dark lizard eyes of previous movies. But this Godzilla is given a welter of amazing powers to far outclass any of his predecessors. I can't see where the franchise can go from here. If this Godzilla were to fight another monster like Mothra, either it would be a lopsided fight lasting a few seconds, or two equally matched, incredibly powerful beasts would level all of Japan in short order. I'll admit that the effects look good, although not really top quality for 2016 like you would find in Marvel superhero movies, but I've never liked any movie for no reason other than it had good effects, and that includes the vastly overrated Avatar.

All in all, the movie is a great technical achievement in the annals of Toho, but the problem is that it's all technique, with no heart and soul, no humanity. It's completely humorless. Even a disaster epic like Independence Day was enlivened by occasional quips from Will Smith. Likewise, even in a heavy film like The Dark Knight Rises, there were moments of levity. Just a little comic relief would go a long way. This film is relentlessly grim and it's ultimately a downer. Maybe that might play well in pessimistic Japan, but give me the good, old days of Godzilla movies that had some fun in them, although some of those did cross the line into just plain goofy. I don't expect to ever watch this again.

While others look at this as an early LGBT-themed movie, I enjoy it from the standpoint of someone who likes to bike. I had no idea what the movie was about, but the title and cover art intrigued me. Among serious cyclists, Breaking Away is almost universally considered the best cycling movie of all time. After seeing The Unknown Cyclist, I think this a close second, easily beating over-hyped movies like American Flyers and Quicksilver. Both Breaking Away and Unknown Cyclist are character-driven, but while Breaking Away's characters were endearing, they were somewhat one-dimensional and for almost the entire movie, the only one with any interest in cycling was Dave. The Unknown Cyclist was a little more balanced in terms of screen time and development given to each character. I miss the classical music in Breaking Away, but the incidental music and power ballads in this movie are still good.

The movie recalls a simpler time in terms of bicycling. A time when cycling was a little less pretentious than it is today. There was less emphasis on technology and style. No hipsters on fashionable fixies or single-speed bikes. The movie shows a more egalitarian side of cycling, with people of all shapes, sizes and colors on high and low-tech bikes on an extended ride, cruising back roads wonderfully devoid of cars. It's all set against a backdrop of spectacular California coastal scenery, which east coast denizens like me only wish we could have. In fact, I prefer the cinematography of this to Breaking Away, which had rather drab Indiana settings punctuated only by the lush quarry. If you want to vicariously feel the joy of just being on a bicycle rather than the more racing-focused milieu of Breaking Away, this movie is a great vehicle for that, capturing the details of a typical mass ride. You can almost feel the sun, the wind and the rain on your face. Feel your legs burning on the uphills. Experience showering and eating in groups, sleeping in tent cities on campgrounds. At the end of the movie, I can almost imagine myself walking among the crowd across that finish line. (Even better, my legs aren't sore.) All the while, there are the standard themes of friendship, love, family and tolerance, but those aren't intrusive. If you like to bike and don't have any hang-ups about homosexuality, I think you'll like this movie.

When this first aired, I didn't like it. It wasn't the Wonder Woman I had seen in the comics. Not even close. A few more viewings over the years didn't change that opinion. But now, after a long break and forty years after its premiere, I can be a bit more objective and less hard-nosed. It really wasn't as bad as I used to think.

A lot of people preferred the Lynda Carter version, but seriously, aside from being somewhat more faithful to the comic, it wasn't that much better. That was just as campy, if not more. Nor was it completely faithful. The familiar twirling costume change was unique to that show, just a shortcut to avoid showing the character having to find a place to change or stash her clothes and costume. Early episodes didn't even have the "explosion," just a fade between wardrobe. And seriously, how many times can one watch Six Million Dollar Man-style leaps, which were also not from the comic? This Wonder Woman seemed to use her wits to get out of jams more than the better-known one did.

I did get a little bored with the constant parade of perils in this movie. Seems she was under attack every ten minutes. Just in time for a commercial break, of course. These Amazons were also annoying. Every time they spoke to each other, they were spouting stilted fortune cookie platitudes rather than sounding like actual dialog.

Ricardo Montalban as Abner Smith was probably the best part of the movie. Suave, classy, charismatic, charming and quite possibly the most honorable, least violent villain in TV history. Definitely not the clichéd murderous adversary trying to kill the hero by whatever means necessary. He never even lost his temper and yelled at his henchmen no matter how many times they disobeyed orders or failed. This was a proto-Roarke, a wise, imaginative, level-headed boss who was intelligent and anticipated almost every contingency. (The white suit didn't hurt, either, although even Mr. Roarke sometimes displayed a darker side not seen here.) And he never lost his composure even in the face of defeat and incarceration. He would have been splendid as her arch-enemy had this series been ordered, that rarest of animals, the likable villain that one could almost root for. Not to be confused with anti-heroes who were flawed but had good intentions. This was a selfish person who maintained his dignity, civility, principles and manners even toward his foes.

As an early TV-movie, this rounded up a welter of stars from popular 1960s sitcoms that had just been cancelled. It's too bad the writers didn't give them anything new to do.

Leading the charge is Ken Berry as a good-hearted, dutiful but otherwise oblivious and bumbling American officer. A World War II clone of his Captain Parmenter from F-Troop. Eva Gabor is an aristocratic socialite again, so if you've seen Green Acres, you know what to expect. Werner Klemperer brings back Colonel Klink under a different name. And Jim Backus is the same blustery blowhard he was as Thurston Howell. This must have been very easy to write since all the writers had to do was imagine what the previous characters would have done. But that's to be expected since the two writers of this never had sitcom experience. They were gag writers for variety shows.

It has its charms as a piece of very lightweight fluff. Just don't go in expecting too much or you'll be disappointed.

I was (and still am) a fan of the 1959 movie, so when this series was announced, I was looking forward to it. Alas, it was a major disappointment. This lacked everything that made the movie charming.

The cast just didn't have the spark that was necessary to carry the show. John Astin was excellent and unforgettable as the zany, completely off the wall Gomez Addams, but he was a very poor fit as the subdued skipper here. Meanwhile, Richard Gilliland never gave the impression of the member of high society that the original Lt. Holden was supposed to be. He was a schemer, but lacked even a bit of the slightly smarmy charisma that made the original Holden character believable. With all due respect to these actors, Cary Grant and Tony Curtis had not only very big shoes to fill, they played their characters perfectly, and if you can't emulate them, you might as well just give it up. The rest of the cast was also peculiarly bland. Only on occasion did a talented guest star bring some real comedic acting to the show, such as Sorrell Booke a couple of years before he became Boss Hogg on the Dukes of Hazzard.

Worst of all, this was a below average sitcom even for that era. Bad jokes aside, there was usually a haphazard buildup through each episode followed by an unimaginative deus ex machina solution then a very abrupt ending with no coda or epilogue. Compared with the top-rated sitcoms at the time - shows like Happy Days and Three's Company - the very best episodes of this were less memorable and far less enjoyable than the very worst of those shows. Looking at the writing credits, it's obvious why. The two men responsible for most of the scripts had no comedy writing credits. They wrote westerns and adventures. Their closest connection was that they came up with the story premise for the original movie, but they didn't write that screenplay. It wasn't a bad idea to make a series from the movie. It's just that this effort was completely lackluster. It's no wonder the show sank beneath the waves, rightfully forgotten even by most of those few who watched it.

Finally saw this after almost 40 years. I didn't catch it on its original network broadcast. I have to agree with other reviews that say it's an inferior version of Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

They have much in common, but so many differences in the ways that count. Darren McGavin was a much better actor in a much better written role, delivering that snappy, sardonic voice-over narration and funny quips, all with the infectious energy that Kolchak always showed and the quirkiness that tied it all together. Kolchak was very much interested in his stories, while Norliss seemed like he was rather reluctant and bored. There was no depth to David Norliss and the proceedings just slogged on monotonously. McGavin's acting made Kolchak's episodes worth watching even when the scripts were bad, not to mention his great supporting characters, both recurring and guests. Norliss was essentially a lone wolf. What was most amazing of all is that Kolchak continued to entertain by slaying monsters (literally) and police officials (figuratively) alike despite McGavin's disdain for the scripts and his bitterness over having been cheated of his promised role as series executive producer. That's the mark of a true professional and a great actor. Thinnes wasn't given much to work with here. He seemed like he was almost sleepwalking through the movie. And unlike Kolchak, Norliss barely interacted with other characters, let alone spar verbally with them.

Worse, the blue-skinned zombie was every bit as bad as Kolchak's often embarrassing monsters. But without McGavin to distract from the situation, there was no disguising the silliness. Other similarities include Robert Cobert's creepy sul ponticello tremolando on the violin, so familiar from Kolchak episodes and opening titles, and the disbelieving sheriff.

All in all, I'll stick with my DVD set of the Kolchak series. When the Norliss pilot ended, I really didn't care what had caused his mysterious disappearance and wouldn't have watched had the show been picked up by a network. It was only marginally better than the Night Stalker remake of 2005.

I guess I'll never get Neil Simon. I know he's received a lot of awards and accolades, but almost none of his works do anything for me, with the notable exception of "The Lonely Guy," but that screenplay was based on Bruce Jay Friedman's material, not Simon's own. Some become great, but only after they've been reshaped by others, like the classic "Odd Couple" series starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman.

This movie is average Simon. Yes, I know it's supposed to be a comedy about how a night in New York becomes hell for a married couple. But the problem is there is absolutely nothing likable about this couple. George is a blowhard who's always taking down names and threatening to sue when he doesn't get his way. The hotel gave away his room because he didn't show up or call before 10 p.m. as the terms of his reservation stated? He'll sue! An airline rep tells him that they can't send his luggage because JFK Airport is still fogged in? He'll sue! What do you want, George, that they charter a plane and parachute your bags to you? But if George is obnoxious, his wife Gwen is like fingernails on chalkboard. I could die happy if I never hear "Oh, my Goooood" in her nasal whine again. She is so dumb that you wonder why George or any man would stay with her. She gives away his wallet and watch for absolutely no reason. If I was from Ohio, I'd be offended at how stupid these characters make Ohioans look. I think this would be a fine, funny comedy if it was about bad things happening to good people, but it's actually a film about bad things happening to stupid people mostly through their own fault. The vast majority of their problems are caused by George's pigheadedness, from refusing to eat on the plane to refusing to get out of the police car.

But this seems to be Simon's habit. His characters usually have no redeeming value. Lemmon & Matthau's "odd couple" in his movie wasn't likable. It took the aforementioned Randall and Klugman (plus good writers) to massage Felix and Oscar into people we could like and cheer on despite their foibles. (Which Simon managed to undo with his eminently forgettable Odd Couple II.) They could still be annoying at times, but you wouldn't find it inconceivable that they would have friends. On the other hand, I'd pay good money to get away from Gwen and George and was happy at the end when they decided to stay in Ohio. The only good thing about this movie is being able to see NYC as it was in 1969.

Bruce Lee was an amazing athlete and martial artist, with a story to match. It's just too bad Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story decided that wasn't worth telling. Instead, there are lots of fight scenes in improbable places with trumped-up foes, not to mention some stupid "curse of the dragon" that the real Bruce would never have believed in. In spots, this movie is almost as campy as the old Batman series was.

A few documentaries have taken honest looks at the Lee phenomenon and managed to remain interesting throughout by showing us a determined, disciplined man who made his own success. In this movie, they had the entirety of Lee's life to use and decided to make up whole sections out of thin air just to spice things up. It puts itself not much above the sensationalistic Hong Kong films that made Bruce look nearly superhuman and the victim of some vast Triad conspiracy when the real man was just as fascinating. What a waste. I know conflict is emphasized in most screen writing classes, but instead of fight after fight as shown in this movie, how about showing some of the famous friends and students Bruce taught? And avoid the idiotic scenes like Bruce supposedly shattering 300+ pound ice blocks into chips with a single punch. If I wanted to see impossible feats like that, I'd go watch a Superman movie.

Bruce's fighting philosophy was to eschew flashy techniques in favor of effective ones. Fighting wasn't for show, but to win. Only on film would he do things like backflips, somersaults, superhigh jumping kicks and animalistic kiai. Show us the man who trained long and hard, and studied and thought about not just fighting, but philosophy and health. Bruce's success was as much a product of his mind as of his body.

We're now nearing 20 years after this movie's release and the 40th anniversary of Lee's death, with his legend and popularity only slightly diminished. To this day, Bruce remains the paragon of martial arts in the eyes of many, the man to whom all others are compared. I have a dream that someone will do a true biopic. His true story deserves better than to be ignored and hidden. I'd like to see a real drama rather than melodrama, with characters that have depth rather than the cartoonish ones in this film. There have been too many lies and myths told about Bruce over the years and this movie shamefully introduced more. "All these years later, people still wonder about the way he died. I prefer to remember the way he lived." Too bad this movie didn't show that way.

Two years after Irwin Allen did some of his best work with his Time Travelers TV movie, he did some of his worst with this summer replacement series. I remember rather liking this back then. Revisiting it via the recently released Amazing Captain Nemo DVD, it's nothing like what I thought I remembered. It was much less fun and exciting. I think I'll stick with my memories. Thanks to the Towering Inferno and the Poseidon Adventure, Allen earned the sobriquet, "Master of Disaster." With this, that was certainly accurate. It was definitely a disaster.

The plot made no sense at all. At one point, Nemo tells Tom to set his hand weapon to stun because "We are not murderers." Never mind that a stunned scuba diver would probably drown, probably a less pleasant death. Only minutes later, they utterly destroy the villain's submarine, so presumably everyone onboard is killed. The Atlanteans appear to be able to breathe water, but Nemo insists that they take his mini-sub to escape. Amazing Captain Nemo, edited down to two hours from several episodes, was even worse. The editing was completely haphazard, jumping from scene to scene at times and being hard to follow.

This cast was utterly forgettable. Jose Ferrer chews the scenery but does little else, once flinging his cape backwards as if he were auditioning for Phantom of the Opera. Tom Hallick, who had previously appeared on Allen's Time Travelers, was okay, but the character was about as two-dimensional as they come, like all of the other characters. Lynda Day George stood around as decoration but didn't actually do anything to help the crew.

A superior undersea effort came a year earlier, with the Man from Atlantis TV movie. That also featured a former Batman guest villain, namely Victor Buono (King Tut) while this had Burgess Meredith (the Penguin). That movie also featured mind control devices. Was Allen cribbing again? Like most Irwin Allen works, there was no character development here. Nemo is stuffy and good. Cunningham is crabby and evil. The Navy pair are loyal. Nobody grows or changes at all through the series.

Allen stole from everything this time. It's no accident that the corridor on Professor Cunningham's sub resembles the one from the beginning of Star Wars. Even the music during that fight shamelessly apes John Williams' iconic score, but without the master's touch. Allen reused (twice!) a shot of two mines colliding and exploding, taken from his 1961 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea movie.

Just how chintzy was the budget? The filming model of the villain's submarine was recognizably built using major parts from a model kit of the Space: 1999 Eagle, which you could buy from any hobby store at the time for less than $10. Maybe that's why they called it the Raven. I can't imagine any other reason why someone would name an undersea vehicle after an aerial creature. To mask the poor effects, every "underwater" shot was filled with swirling particles and silt. There were "robots" in cheap rubber masks and spray-painted wetsuits. The mask on Tor muffled the actor's voice and they never bothered to even dub it, even though it would have been easy since there were no lip movements to match. Not that hearing him more clearly would have been a blessing. His lines were monotonous, ridiculous ones like, "Aliens live! Aliens must be destroyed!" If you must watch one of Irwin Allen's undersea works, I strongly suggest going with his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series instead. That was ten times better than this. Or better yet, get the 1961 Voyage theatrical movie with Walter Pidgeon and Barbara Eden.

Somewhere between the sugary sweet fantasies of Rankin-Bass and the more cynical (yet enjoyable in their own right) offerings like "Scrooged" lies this little TV movie. It makes few efforts at being cool, instead aiming for pre-teen innocence, or maybe just the innocence adults think they had at that age. In any event, whether by design, by accident or even by the idealizing effects of misty childhood memory, this movie has won a place in the hearts of many kids and kids at heart who watched it in the 1980s.

It has all the usual ingredients for a decent Christmas movie. Family strife, imminent peril but no real violence, little people as elves, singing, colorful toy clutter, and some fairly imaginative Christmas-themed props. But it takes itself fairly seriously and doesn't devolve into complete goofiness like "Elf."

This was one of the early movies showing a "high tech" Santa, far presaging "The Santa Clause" or "Santa vs. the Snowman." Of course, by modern standards, the effects are primitive, but remember that this is a kid's movie, and kids are not nearly as picky as adults are. Which is a good thing. Take it for the story and don't whine that it's not a Disney/Pixar visual extravaganza. It could have been a lot worse, being a TV movie, and you have to give them points for doing quite a bit of exterior filming on location in Alaska rather than some fakey soundstage. The interiors of North Pole City were small, limited by the budget, but there was a bit of homey coziness in there.

If there is one real weakness in the movie, it's the acting. Many were fine, including Jaclyn Smith, Art Carney, June Lockhart, Paul Williams (alas, at 5'2", too tall to look convincing as an elf, especially when around all the real dwarfs playing elves) and veteran character actor Mason Adams. On the other hand, R.J. Williams was not a good child actor, being roughly in the same league as the "Full House" era Olsen twins. He overacted during most of his scenes, and the emotion just never seemed genuine. In the other direction was Paul Le Mat as his father. Every line, facial tic and gesture seems to come out of an acting class technique. It doesn't feel like anything comes from his heart. With flat delivery of his lines and an unexpressive face, he was terrible and as unconvincing as his young co-star. A second problem is that Santa was very passive in this. He never really does anything to try to save North Pole City other than convincing Claudia and the kids. Later on, in desperation, he says that he'll have to take matters into his own hands and convince Michael himself, but nothing comes of this.

All in all, it's a worthwhile treat for the family, although it may bore some adults who didn't grow up with it.

I will always remember this film as one of my favorites of the summer of '86. In a warm summer in NYC, this light confection was refreshing as a cooling thunderstorm. Then again, there wasn't much competition that summer. Aliens and Stand by Me were other standouts, along with a couple of other enjoyable but not top-rate films, like Big Trouble in Little China. But to a native and fan of NYC, this movie is like taking a whirlwind tour of the city, which is always welcome. Ivan Reitman, still in pretty good form at the time, took advantage of some the great atmosphere of NYC, from the Brooklyn waterfront to 57th Street to Foley Square.

The cast was generally quite good. Redford played his role with breezy aplomb, looking appropriately lawyerly. Some say Debra Winger hated her experience with the film, but if she did, then she's a better actress than she's given credit for, because she showed outstanding chemistry in her scenes with Redford. Daryl Hannah, as usual, was a weak actress. Not to mention not particularly pretty. "Extremely attractive?" "Sensational body?" "Hypnotic eyes?" How about none of the above? Terence Stamp and Brian Dennehy turned in adequate, if workmanlike, performances.

Some rather big plot holes, albeit forgivable for the sake of drama. For instance, it's hard to believe that a major gallery with tens of millions of dollars worth of irreplaceable art inside would have neither a fire suppression system nor even smoke detectors. To even cover those works in such a building would have required exorbitant insurance premiums. Still, the script was rather good, with sometimes witty banter, unlike the crude, forgettable lines in Top Gun, penned by the same writers. Unlike that flick, these weren't cardboard characters, but that's expected since that was targeted for the testosterone crowd. This, like their script for the Secret of My Success a year later, was for a different demographic.

The 2003 DVD was, not surprisingly, a disappointment. Universal makes terrible DVDs and was working on getting a similarly bad reputation with HD DVD before that format surrendered in the HD format war. There's a massive amount of grain and noise in most scenes, although not so much artifacting as the 2000 DVD. There are precious few extras, only one rushed 10-minute "making of" featurette and the theatrical trailer. No TV teaser, which was what got me interested. No Rod Stewart music video with its courtroom setting, clips from the movie and appearance by Roscoe Lee Browne. No outtakes, brief portions of which were used in the end credits. No alternate ending, even though it was seen on broadcast TV, so we know it exists.

All in all, a fun reminder of the 80s and of NYC in the 80s.

I remember being intrigued by this series before its premiere back in 1988. I also remember I quickly lost interest after a few episodes, although I couldn't remember why until now. Seeing this again, I can understand why I did. The show is rather like "Monk," with its eccentric, supposedly brilliant, antisocial, iconoclastic, grumpy lead character minus the OCD quirks, but still with the spunky female personal assistant and with worse writing. Austin James always sees tiny details that we the audience could not. To make it seem more intelligent, the writers peppered the scripts with scientific trivia and pseudo-scientific babble. The latter was especially embarrassing considering Isaac Asimov was listed as co-creator and scientific adviser. A supercomputer that can make neon signs explode and rupture gas lines at specific places? That has continuous speech recognition and natural language processing -- a goal that still eludes computer scientists today -- but not the much simpler speech synthesis? That can turn the dial on a cheap radio or an old TV set as if they came with motors installed on the knobs? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that most of the "science" in this show was nonsense.

Subsequent episodes were little better. The "smartest man in the world" keeps saying "nukular" and "nukulotides." He does burnouts when he has to get somewhere fast, instead of knowing that less smoking rubber means more traction and a faster start if you're not in a Top Fuel dragster. You can target a virus at a specific human by inserting that human's DNA into it??? Good grief. Some of the situations are painfully obvious and clichéd, like the hoary "videotape was substituted for live video but Austin noticed items on the tape didn't match." That was old when Mission: Impossible used to do it twenty years previous. Episodes mixed these shopworn plot devices with supposed scientific concepts but each time proved that the writers knew barely more than the names of those concepts. It was as if Asimov had no hand in the show after co-creating it.

The show seemed to rely mostly on the charisma of former "Hardy Boys" star Parker Stevenson, but that couldn't compensate for the contrived scripts. It wasn't even as good as an average Columbo episode from the original NBC run. Sometimes, information in the climax would just come out of the blue, rather than foreshadowed for the audience. The concept had promise, but was undercut by mediocre writing. But I guess scientific geniuses generally don't become television writers. What a waste. It could have been science fiction of the hardest kind, but instead turned out to be science fantasy folded into run of the mill murder mysteries.

If you want to see what TV mystery and suspense writers can really do with the science fiction genre if they really put their minds to it, watch "Earth II," the 1971 pilot movie from the writers/producers of "Mission: Impossible," or "Prototype," the 1983 TV movie from Michael Levinson & William Link, who created and wrote the classic "Columbo" and later "Murder, She Wrote." (Although inexplicably, Link served as executive story consultant for this series. I guess they took his advice only sparingly.)

This was a mildly interesting variation on "Mission: Impossible." The twist is that the bad guys had found out the identities of all the established agents, so Operation: Masquerade was created. Civilians with the necessary skills were recruited for one-time missions, assigned by Mr. Lavender and backed up by freshly graduated agents Casey and Danny. With no background in spying, the civilians wouldn't be known to the intelligence community at large. As a hook for viewers, it should have worked. Think wish fulfillment. Your country needs you and your inimitable skills, and you don't even have to spend six months at Camp Peary before heading out on your mission.

This appears to have been inspired by the 1966 pilot "Call to Danger." In that, the government had a database of ordinary people with special skills whom they would call upon for important missions. That show was never picked up, but one good thing did come of it, giving that a bona fide "Mission: Impossible" connection. Writer/producer Bruce Geller saw the pilot. When Steven Hill, the lead actor of M:I, became too difficult, Geller replaced him with the lead actor of "Call to Danger" who had impressed him, one Peter Graves. The rest is television history.

It's been almost 25 years? Time flies. Still, the show does date itself. There's that '80s big hair, glitzy wardrobe and lots of makeup. The theme song, sung by Crystal Gayle, has a very '80s instrumental backing. It's nonetheless one of the better theme songs of the decade.

Back in the '70s, this movie was on the 4:30 Movie after school on WABC several times. Even though it was on only a handful of times, it made an impression on me, probably because I also liked the show back then. This was Irwin Allen's own version of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." Admiral Nelson was as much the iconoclastic genius as Captain Nemo ever was. If Walt Disney had a fight with a giant squid, the eventual Master of Disaster decided to go him one better with both a giant octopus and a giant squid. I didn't see it again until the '90s, but I enjoyed it more then than years before.

Unlike the series, this, for the most part, tried to be serious. Save for a few decent episodes, the series was the epitome of campiness, seemingly a specialty of Allen's. It's part of the reason that today, I don't watch the show anymore, preferring to watch this movie every once in a while. Although, like most of Allen's writing, there's virtually no character development. You're given a couple of hooks into each character and that's it. The admiral is brilliant, irascible and smokes cigars. The captain looks out for his men and is engaged. His fiancée is the admiral's secretary and always believes in him. Alvarez is a religious nutjob. Frankie Avalon's lieutenant plays the trumpet. Beyond things like that, Allen preferred action scenes rather than showing what motivated them.

It's a pity the show never had a female regular. Sure, Barbara Eden was better off starring in "I Dream of Jeannie," but a regular female touch would have been more pleasing than the all-boys boat of the series (plus occasional female guest stars). Only one cast member would return for the series. Square-jawed Del Monroe played rebellious crewman Kowski, but as show regular and sonar operator Kowalski, became just the opposite, loyal to a fault to his captain and admiral.

It's arguable whether Walter Pidgeon's Admiral Nelson was better than Richard Basehart's. Certainly Basehart's became more familiar over the course of four seasons. This Captain Crane is far more irritating than David Hedison's, though. It seemed that he spent an awful lot of time just walking around the sub rather than being in the control room. And when he wasn't doing that, he was sulking, snapping at his crew, second-guessing the Admiral and just generally being borderline insubordinate.

There are subtle differences between this USOS Seaview and the SSRN Seaview of the show. Foremost is the observation lounge in the nose. Many have decried that the nose exterior has eight windows while the lounge only has four (a problem fixed when they built a new model later in the show), but eight windows actually make more sense here than in the show. Unlike the show, the observation lounge is not a direct extension of the control room, but on the deck below, reached by the spiral staircase. It's conceivable that there were four more windows above the lounge, at the same level as the control room. The exterior is still a distinctive design even today, although modern subs designed for possible arctic operations eschew diving planes on the sail to avoid damage to them when breaching polar ice. And many modern subs do use an X-shaped tailfin configuration, although Allen chose it for a different reason (he liked the tailfins on his car).

I definitely don't miss everyone rocking from one side of the sub to the other and back as the rubber-suited monster of the week clutched the eight-foot model of the Seaview.

The science was, as usual for Allen, laughable. A radiation belt that "burns." Ice that sinks. They're too deep for divers, so they use a minisub. But the men inside the the minisub are wearing scuba gear, so it's a "wet" sub that wouldn't protect them against outside water pressure. Not to mention numerous inconsistencies. The reactor room is shown early on to have an alarm system, but a saboteur easily walks past it on the way in and out without setting it off.

The Master of Recycling eventually reused numerous scenes from the movie in the series, sometimes the same scene in several different episodes. And these weren't just the usual "Seaview under way" stock footage, but things like them being chased by the attack sub or the men searching for the undersea telephone cable/octopus fight.

And when I say "younger viewers," I mean younger viewers in 1988, not today, who have a shorter attention span and need more special effects. In fact, today's kids would find the 1988 vintage PC-generated computer graphics on the control screens laughably primitive. (Which they were even by the standards of the day. Most late '80s videogames had much better graphics.) Because of the low budget, the show is almost completely shipbound, except for a few scenes on Earth early on and a fight on Expo Tomorrow halfway through, which doesn't fool anyone with its clearly soundstage atmosphere. The Voyager sets are a variety of vacuformed plastic panels assembled into various compartments, including the lounge, the gym, the corridors and the airlock. Yet the interior did feel somewhat well-designed and -realized as a ship. There are a few space shots, mostly two or three repeated ad infinitum, with the same cheesy music playing. But you can't expect a megabucks blockbuster from a family-oriented pilot produced for the Sunday Disney movie. This was one of the early efforts at reducing production costs by filming in Vancouver, a practice since adopted by many TV shows and movies.

The movie was part "Star Trek," part "Lost in Space," part "Space Academy" and part "SpaceCamp" I actually enjoyed this much more than the early episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" broadcast in the months preceding this, which were so serious and self- important. Bienstock was a dead ringer for Will Robinson, redheaded kid super-genius (with a dollop of Wesley Crusher added). In fact, this is actually much more enjoyable than the 1998 "Lost in Space" movie, which had the splashy effects but not the fun. The cast was generally fine, if a little stiff at times, even veteran Duncan Regehr, whose head-thrashing electrocution spasms in the climax were hilariously amateurish. Pity the show was never picked up, so the young actors never had time to hone their craft.

Alas, aside from the relatively stock plot (including the transparent ruse at the end), the writer really played fast and loose, betraying a poor understanding of science. Here they are, just starting out their mission, and they almost immediately find the Vanguard Explorer. How could the Vanguard Explorer find Demeter with its probes so quickly when it was so close to Earth? (They weren't out there that long since much of the crew including Vance was still young.) They also catch up to a whole passel of radio transmissions from Earth, ranging from Lindbergh's flight to stuff from the '80s. But seeing as how the speed of light (and radio waves) can't vary, there's no way all those signals could all be in the same spot for them to be received simultaneously. In fact, even the newest signals they intercepted, Oliver North's Iran-Contra testimony, should have been 100 light years from Earth (100 years old at the time, traveling away at the speed of light). They were taking 12 years just to get the 18 light years to Demeter, so catching up to signals that should have been up to 160 light years out at the beginning of the mission is supremely silly.

It looks like the show would have had Admiral Beasley chasing them all the way. But since the Triton Corsair was faster than Earth Star Voyager, why did they need Voyager? And transporting billions of humans almost 20 light years to another planet? How long would the trip have taken? With that much life support needed for 6+ billion humans on a 12-year trip, couldn't they just have cleaned the Earth? Was the hitherto rare Baumann Drive that easy to manufacture that they could build them by the millions? That has to be one of the silliest "science fiction" ideas I've ever heard. They would have been better off spending their resources building O'Neill space colonies, especially since they had to build the giant Voyager just to transport a small crew.

Do you want to feel old? Imagine first watching this movie where they say it will be a 26-year mission. Feels like a very long time in the future, right? Guess what? If it were real, we'd be closing in on the end of the mission today, after 19 years. Time flies.

It was an age of infamy, deep in what some consider the darkest years of Trekdom. Deep Space Nine was gone. All that was left was Voyager. So Paramount let this be made to celebrate ... what, exactly? It wasn't any significant anniversary for the bona fide cultural phenomenon that was Trek. There was no new show or movie on the horizon. It was like they were just putting out a program to take up space and remind us that Trek lives. Emptiness would have been preferable. They should have remembered that even in the Trek-less years of the early '70s, the fans still had plenty of fun.

In this show, the jokes were weak, the acting weaker. Jason Alexander couldn't do a Kirk impression if his life depended on it. Kevin Pollak would have been so much better, but this was Alexander's own vanity project as executive producer. Apparently nobody around him had the compassion to tell him what a bad idea it was. In the few moments when this wasn't painful, it was just plain boring. Watching any episode of the original show would have been a hundred times more enjoyable. It was an insult to any true fan. The actors looked, sounded and and acted nothing like the characters they were supposed to be playing, which made for severe distraction, something they could ill afford in a program as wretched as this. Luckily, for most viewers, this program has been mercifully forgotten. Maybe it's an intentional amnesia.

But what do I know? Maybe I just need to get a life.

Robot Jox tries hard, but is fundamentally a series of fight scenes strung together -- robot against robot, man against man, man against woman. The premise had potential, but it seems the script wasn't really given the couple of more drafts it needed. Still, it was fairly good, for a science fiction action movie. Part of it was because the script was by Joe Haldeman. For those who aren't familiar with the name, Haldeman wrote the award-winning science fiction novel "The Forever War." It's considered one of the very best powered battle armor novels, right up there with Robert Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" and John Steakley's "Armor." And this movie is really more like a giant powered battle armor movie, rather than giant robots. It's closer to what fans would have wanted instead of the travesty that was Paul Verhoeven's "Starship Troopers," which bore only a passing resemblance to the novel it was based on.

Despite some assumptions, this really isn't based on Homer's "Iliad." A couple of names are all they had in common. Achilles having his robot's foot blown off had no parallel in the Iliad, which didn't include Achilles' death. Nor was the ancient Achilles a noble warrior. He was the mightiest, but also vengeful and petty. Even the robot jock killed off in the first scene doesn't fit. He was named Hercules, while the Greek Iliad would have had Herakles.

The effects were fairly good for the time and the budget. True, it wasn't comparable to "Terminator 2" a year later, but that movie cost ten times as much. The stop motion was almost as good as the robotic walkers in "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." Better, in fact, than a lot of Ray Harryhausen animation, which is highly regarded, but quite dated.

Don't bring high expectations into this and you probably won't be disappointed. It's better than a lot of other low-budget flicks and even some big-budget blockbuster wannabes that have better effects but far worse scripts.

This movie is all ultra-lightweight fluff, predictable from beginning to end. As a Don Knotts vehicle, "The Incredible Mr. Limpet" was much better, with Knotts' character there not nearly as incompetent or ignorant. His performance there was toned down, with none of his trademark goggle-eyed stare, although that may have something to do with him being replaced for most of the movie by a cartoon fish. Knotts made a living of playing the likable imbecile, much like Bob Denver did. Neither really seemed to be able to break out to other types of roles, assuming they were simply typecast. It was probably because of the slouch, the wild stare and the high-pitched voice. John Ritter, whom Knotts worked with in "Three's Company," was able to transcend his genre, branching out successfully into dramatic roles like "The Dreamer of Oz," but the closest Knotts ever got was a small role in "Pleasantville." Even Leslie Nielsen was a bad fit here, uncomfortably neither straight dramatic actor as he was at the time nor deadpan comedic actor as he later became in "Airplane!" and "Police Squad."

There's also no way the then-43 year-old Knotts could pass for a 35 year-old, as his character insisted he was. It was as ludicrously unbelievable as Tom Hanks at 38 playing a college-age Forrest Gump.

The film was clearly made on a shoestring budget, very much looking like a hastily-filmed TV episode. It's especially evident in the "exterior" scenes of the "town" where Roy goes after he's fired. It's unlikely even a pre-schooler would be fooled by the Mayberry-like soundstage artificiality.

Even viewing this strictly as a children's movie, it's very disappointing. It's not because it lacks action or special effects, although it does. The pace is much too slow, the situations repetitive. How many times can you watch Roy getting onto or off a bus? A comedy for kids should at least sometimes be madcap, with breakneck gags, otherwise you risk boring them (and any adults in the theater as well). Movies, even kid's movies, have improved quite a bit in the intervening decades. Even many contemporary comedies were better filmed and written. Disney's "The Love Bug," for instance, at least had some interesting race action and much better character development.

Back in the 1970s, WPIX ran "The Adventures of Superman" every weekday afternoon for quite a few years. Every once in a while, we'd get a treat when they would preempt neighboring shows to air "Superman and the Mole Men." I always looked forward to those days. Watching it recently, I was surprised at just how bad it really was.

It wasn't bad because of the special effects, or lack thereof. True, George Reeves' Superman costume was pretty bad, the edges of the foam padding used to make him look more imposing being plainly visible. And true, the Mole Men's costumes were even worse. What was supposed to be a furry covering wouldn't have fooled a ten year-old, since the zippers, sleeve hems and badly pilling fabric badly tailored into baggy costumes were all painfully obvious. But these were forgivable shortcomings.

No, what made it bad were the contrived plot devices. Time and again, Superman failed to do anything to keep the situation from deteriorating. A lynch mob is searching for the creatures? Rather than round up the hysterical crowd or search for the creatures himself, he stands around explaining the dangers of the situation to Lois and the PR man. The creatures are cornered? Again, he stands around watching and talking but doesn't save them until they're shot. Luke Benson, the town's rabble-rouser, shoots at him? Attempted murder to any reasonable person, but Superman releases the man over and over to cause more problems. Superman had quite a few opportunities to nip the problem in the bud, but never once took advantage of them.

That said, both George Reeves and Phyllis Coates played their characters well, seemingly instantly comfortable in the roles. If only they had been given a better script to work with.

I didn't think it was possible but this film actually made less sense than any Scooby Doo episode. I was a first generation Scooby fan, watching it every Saturday morning year in and year out in the early 1970s, until Scrappy Doo drove me away. We got to know and care for those characters. Amazingly, they're not here. Who are these people, this redhead, blond and brunette? They're certainly not Daphne, Fred and Velma. Freddie Prinze, Jr. was simply channeling Owen Wilson. Helium-voiced Sarah Michelle Gellar is all wrong for stunning Daphne. And Linda Cardinelli was too whiny to be calm, collected Velma. I'm not even going to ask about all the sudden techno-wizardry and the fighting skills. Not to mention the original Mystery Machine gang NEVER went up against actual ghosts, not even once. They always exposed the ghosts to be a fraud. This wasn't Scooby Doo. It was Ghostbusters meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The only good thing about this movie was Matthew Lillard, who was the only cast member to truly capture the spirit (and voice) of the cartoon character.

If you want to see a good kids' monster movie this Halloween, I would suggest "The Monster Squad" from 1987 instead. It was a much better and sadly overlooked film.