Wolf (1994)

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, James Spader, Christopher Plummer

Have I Seen It Before: Never. A monster movie starring the Joker and Catwoman? The movie absolutely fascinated me from the far distance of a movie poster or VHS cover at a Blockbuster or other rental venue. But it was one of those uniquely grown-up (as opposed to adult, which has a different connotation) films that was just out of reach, and somehow got a little more than forgotten by the time I had freedom to come around to it.

Did I Like It: The opening credits unfurl, and I know I can’t be in for a bad time, and this doesn’t even take into account the fact that the Nicholson+Pfeiffer+Mike Nichols equation should be more than enough to guarantee a good time. James Spader? Screw you, I thought he was great on The Office. David Hyde Pierce? Who has had a bad time when he is on the screen? Ennio Morricone? Slow down, movie. You already had me at Jack Nicholson!

And the movie that follows fulfills that promise, for the most part. When it shifts the mythos of the werewolf into a commentary on toxic masculinity of the 1990s*, it moves the monster movie into something more interesting than it might be on its own. When it is Columbia’s big summer movie, complete with the complicated real estate of two of the biggest stars at that moment respectively growling and arching their back in grey scale, it ultimately doesn’t quote move beyond being just another monster movie whose special effects had little hope of not aging past their sell-by date by the time the 90s were over.

*Don’t worry: It hasn’t changed that much in 30 years. Also, worry: It hasn’t changed that much in 30 years.

Somewhere in Time (1980)

Director: Jeannot Szwarc

Cast: Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer, Teresa Wright

Have I Seen it Before: I’m sure I had to have. It lies among that long list of movies which seemed perpetually on cable. I would have had to see it over the years, but I may have only seen clips.

Did I Like It: I’m going to double down on that assessment that I must have seen it before, because I found the whole affair—besides the last few minutes; we’ll get to that in a minute—thoroughly predictable. I had to be remembering it, right? Szwarc might be purveyor of films I can’t bring myself to watch all the way through (Jaws 2 (1978)) and films that feel like the studio barely decided to release (Supergirl (1984)), but Richard Matheson really doesn’t have it in him to miss.

The chemistry between Reeve and Seymour sells the movie, but maybe I’m just too inured to the charms of a time travel story to get engaged, especially when traveling across the 4th dimension is presented less a question of improbably physics, and more a question of philosophy, willpower, and the need to clean one’s pockets.

When the film isn’t being predictable, it’s going out of its way to be aggravating. How did Elise (Seymour) put it together that her love (Reeve) was from the future and had to go back there based on the available information. Even Christopher Lloyd and Malcolm McDowell had to level with Mary Steenburgen in order to move things along. There’s also the suddenness of the film’s final moments. It takes great pains to sell us on the romance of the early years of the 20th century, only to rip Richard Collier back to the present and have him miserable amongst some of the most depressing vies of the early 1980s (the film really did have a great casting director when it came to actual, literal garbage). He then dies in such a way that leads me to believe Reeve has to walk before Natalie Portman could run in Star Wars — Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Then their together in heaven. Hey, movie: Jim Cameron called, and he’s positively one submarine away from trying to sell us on the idea of one vacation ruining you from making another connection with a human being for the rest of your life.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)

Director: Nicholas Meyer

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForrest Kelley, Kevin Spacey Christopher Plummer*

Have I Seen it Before: Well, this is the first film in the Star Trek series I’ve reviewed, so unless we happen to be dealing with a new release, it’s a pretty safe bet that I’ve seen it before.

Did I Like It: It might objectively be the best Star Trek film of all time. Does that mean it is the best Star Trek film of all time, or even the best Star Trek film directed by Nicholas Meyer? Well, that’s a different story.

I’ve written a couple of times in these reviews about timelessness in films. It’s appropriate to broach the subject of the film, because the notion was put into my head by Meyer, and he perfects the reach for a timeless quality in this film. Beyond a few scant special effects that might have been a little ahead of their time, there’s not really an aspect of this movie, from the music, to the cinematography, all the way to the hair styles, there is almost nothing about this film that restricts it to being made in the early 1990s. It’s a marvel to behold, and a phenomenon that Meyer’s other great space-opera Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) can’t even claim, even though that is one of my all-time top five movies.

Even the one element that threatens to make the film strictly of its time manages to transcend. Clearly a parable about the end of the Soviet Union (with just a pinch of Watergate-esque intrigue thrown in for good measure), the film is clearly commenting about the end of the 80s and the beginning the 90s. The Klingons have their own version of Chernobyl, unrelenting hostilities are coming to an unfathomable end, and the old guard is to varying degrees uncomfortable with the forthcoming future, or the titular undiscovered country**. But I think it may be a byproduct of living in a political era that could—politely—called “interesting” that the macro machinations of the galaxy here can’t help but feel relevant to the here and now. This is when Star Trek often works the best, and it shows.

* Could you imagine? Don’t. #2017jokesfiresale

** Which is a strange title for this film, if treated to any further scrutiny. The Wrath of Khan was originally called The Undiscovered Country, and as it is an allusion to Hamlet, and specifically death, it feels more appropriate to that film. Here, it is essentially saying that the sometime arduous road to peace only ends in death. Ominous. Mad ominous, folks.