Dune (1984)

Director: David Lynch

Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Francesca Annis, Brad Dourif, Patrick Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Never. So here’s what I did that was kind of stupid. When Dune (2021) came out, in one of my book-buying binges, I picked up Frank Herbert’s original novel and told myself that I wasn’t going to watch any of the films until I read the source material. Cut to three years later and I finally got through that thing* and I have a lot catching up to do elsewhere.

That doesn’t really account for the additional thirty-five-plus years I’ve spent avoiding the film.

Did I Like It: In the first few minutes, there was a very real chance I was going to hate the film very, very deeply. Opening with a V.O. narration is usually a way to get me to check out, having it come from a floating head among the cosmos would pretty much seal the deal of my antipathy. That this opening from Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen) is so weirdly uncertain that it really felt like I could start writing my review in the first five minutes.

Then again, injecting the character into the film in this way is a pretty faithful adaptation of the book itself. That may be the film’s biggest ambition and ultimate weakness. It is a slavishly faithful adaptation, but feels the need to zip through all of the story points to get things in around two hours. What Herbert does best doesn’t get any time to simmer here, so instead we get a lot of exposition machines flitting in and out of the frame.

And yet, I can’t completely dismiss the film either. It does manage to effectively depict the worlds of the Duneiverse at a time when science fiction films had to often make do with their limitations.

*I didn’t read the appendices. Even I have my limits.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

Director: Brett Ratner

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: There’s so much about the film that works, I’m tempted to give the whole affair a pass, but it feels like everything that does work about the movie is left over from other filmmakers. The misé-en-scene of the X-Men cinematic universe and large swaths of the cast are remnants of Bryan Singer’s work* in the first two films. Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, and Ian McKellen—and they are really the center of the film, especially as one realizes that Famke Janssen is essentially the center of the film, but not much more than a MacGuffin with dialogue— continue to fill their roles with aplomb. The world and sets those characters occupy feel (at least occasionally) still real.

The storyline and new cast members here are largely left over from Matthew Vaughn’s (he who went on to revitalize the franchise with X-Men: First Class (2011)) abortive relationship with the film. Giving the mutants an opportunity to assimilate into the human world provides a good jumping off point for drama, and really only in a way that an X-Men story can. Kelsey Grammer is sublime casting for Hank McCoy/Beast, and I want to believe that had more to do with Vaughn than Ratner. Maybe I’m wrong.

But unfortunately, the film doesn’t end up being more than the sum of its part. It feels stripped down to fit into the shape of a pretty typical summer action movie. The pathos isn’t there. It’s too bad that it propped up the legend around Singer’s earlier work. If Dark Phoenix (2019) is any indication, the Dark Phoenix saga is probably the unadaptable story, and some of Singer’s polish might have worn off sooner rather than later…

Then again, he did make Superman Returns (2006) instead. So, maybe I am wrong.

*I feel a tad remiss in that I didn’t mention in my review of X2: X-Men United (2003) that the perceived idea of Singer’s auteur status seems like it was largely bunk, even before he couldn’t be relied upon to actually direct the films for which he received credit. Apparently he spent much of his career hiding his deep terribleness that the movies that mae him famous had to be largely completed by producers.

X2: X-Men United (2003)

Director: Bryan Singer

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Alan Cumming

Have I Seen It Before: Ha. I’m oddly proud of the fact that I opted to go see this at the expense of going to my senior prom*. I remember so vividly that I went to the film with somebody who then worked with me at a grocery store. After the film, he declared that the film was a Christian parable, especially the scene where Bobby Drake/Iceman’s (Shawn Ashmore) parents won’t accept him and ask him if he had tried not being a mutant.

I didn’t quite have the heart to tell him what it was an obvious allegory for, especially as he seemed to like the film well enough.

Not a month goes by where I don’t think about the fact that that dude was technically my date for senior prom.

Did I Like It: Here’s the wild thing. If my moviegoing companion had focused on Nightcrawler’s (Cumming) story, he might have had a point. It can be a lot of things to a lot of different people, apparently, and never feel weighed down by everything its trying to do.

That doesn’t even cover the fact that every objective element is improved upon the original, a film that itself largely works. The action is more sure of itself, the scope of the story more epic, and the cast of characters embrace further corners of the source material that the original film seemed borderline ashamed of (even if it objectively just couldn’t afford to let its mutant flag fly).

Then there’s the fact that this is objectively one of the most apt homages to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) I’ve ever seen. Honestly. Play the last few minutes of both films side by side. They very nearly sync up.

*Yes, I’m aware I could go to both in a single day, or even a single weekend. The first time I saw Spider-Man (2002) was immediately after the junior prom, but I figured I would only re-create the portions of the evening that worked.

Logan (2017)

Director: James Mangold

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Stephen Merchant

Have I Seen it Before: Mystifyingly, only once during its theatrical run. Here, I finally cracked open my blu-ray and experience the black-and-white cut, which has only improved the film. You really should only watch it that way from now on, in case you were wondering.

Did I Like It: When the X-Men movies started now... checks calendar...Oh, Christ...twenty years ago, I think we all agreed that the efforts* of Bryan Singer produced the best possible version of an X-Men movie. It downplayed the more impenetrable space opera elements and tried to take the more human elements of those stories and actually making a film out of them. Was the effort completely successful? No. Did the series proceed to vary wildly in quality and embrace those elements only fans would care about? Yes.

But, here? First of all, the trailer for the film may very well be one of the greatest trailers ever produced, but that’s hardly a fair yardstick by which to judge any feature. Plenty of absolutely forgettable films have managed to spark some kind of imagination from the ad department. 

This film—the real, full meal of it—may not be the greatest thing ever, but is so lovingly crafted that I will have a truly difficult time coming up with any complaints about it. Stripping the characters of much of their strength, they are left to feel their way through the proceedings, and it is immediately clear that, best, they will only be marginally successful in their last mission to find some kind of peace. Any time a filmmaker can tell a tragic tale and still leave us with some shade of hope, that is a truly special thing, and the presence of the Marvel vanity card at the beginning of the proceedings should barely be mentioned.

That being said, it isn’t without its faults (I said it would be difficult to complaint, not impossible). As a native of Oklahoma, I don’t remember the mountains off in the distance, but it’s hard to view a film that only kind of has an awareness of one of its locations too harshly. That being said, too many times, a post-modern example of a genre can’t help but make their homage explicit. This movie has Shane (1953) oozing out of the scars left by its adamantium claws. One can feel that kinship, and it is no less powerful if one didn’t have any awareness of that previous film, or the western genre in general. Having the characters watch and then quote from the movie feels like a distraction. What is otherwise a visceral cinematic experience become briefly a movie about people watching movies, which isn’t nearly as fun.

*Is “effort” even the right word when it comes to the films of Bryan Singer? It’s only in the full light of day that we realize he was very nearly fired from almost every movie he helmed after Apt Pupil (1998). That knowledge probably makes X2: X-Men United (2003), with its near mutiny from the cast easier to watch now.

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Director: Stuart Baird

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Tom Hardy

Have I Seen It Before?: Oh, yes. Funny story: In early December 2002, I had my wisdom teeth removed. I tried to get clear-headed enough from all of the pain medication so I could make it to a screening of this film during its opening weekend. As the film, sort of happened in front of me it felt all wrong, so much so that as the end credits limped into existence, I shouted in the middle of the theater, “What the hell was that?” Apparently I still had some cotton in my mouth, and more than a little painkillers in my system, and a little cotton in my motuh, so it sounded more like, “Wha tha hee iyat?” But the point remains.

Did I like it?: See the previous statement.

I love Star Trek, and 2000s/1990s when it seemed like there would never be a shortage of Trek material, it felt like there was plenty of room to thoroughly dislike the entries that didn’t hold up.

The film is not a celebration of a beloved TV franchise, but more the final strained compromise of years’ worth of studio politics. Stuart Baird only got the director seat because he did Paramount a solid by doing a last-minute editing jobs on Mission: Impossible II (2000) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). One might say that the great film editors shouldn’t direct Star Trek films after the muddled affair that was Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), but Robert Wise edited films like Citizen Kane (1941) and had previously directed The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and West Side Story (1961). Stuart Baird got the movie Supernova (2000) into some form that could be released in theaters, after directing the distinctly unmemorable Executive Decision (1996) and U.S. Marshals (1998) and hasn’t been allowed to direct a film since.

There’s a temptation to make the review a list of complaints. They artificially lowered the dialogue for Worf (Michael Dorn) to where he is inexplicably the actor with the most screen time in all of Trek, and somehow unrecognizable. The films based on The Next Generation never successfully utilized Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and things are certainly no better here. The film desperately wants to be The Next Generation’s answer to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and the desperation shows.

And yet, since it ushered in an era of a Trek desert, I don’t want to think of the film as a total loss. It’s the last film to feature a score by Jerry Goldsmith, so one wants to revel in what we have left. The ending originally felt like a sour note to end the time with The Next Generation crew with a whimper, but thankfully Star Trek: Picard is here to continue the adventures of the man from La Barre, and it solidifies the sacrifice of Data as genuine far more than the deaths of other characters in the Trek series over the years.

Star Trek: Generations (1994)

Director: David Carson

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, William Shatner, Whoopi Goldberg

Have I Seen it Before: I saw it before I ever saw it. More on that in a minute.

Did I Like It: It’s exactly what we the fans probably wanted from a first Next Generation film, but it may be that we don’t really know what we want, as the film ultimately winds up a disappointment.

I feel this film far more than I think about it, and I think that’s the fundamental truth about it. 

It is the summer of 1994. Star Trek: The Next Generation has just gone off the air with an epic, perfectly-formed final episode that doesn’t really serve as a finale. All of the characters—in true TV fashion—haven’t changed. The TV audience—including 9-year-old me—are fine with that. We know that while this is the end of the weekly adventures of the crew of the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, and we wouldn’t have to wait long to see them again.

And so we come into the first Next Generation film with a list of things that the show had never quite addressed. Could the saucer section of the Enterprise act as an escape pod for the rest of the ship and—if need be—land safely on a planet? Who were the people that served aboard the presumably Excelsior-class Enterprise-B? What could possibly bring down the Enterprise-D? What happened to James T. Kirk (Shatner) after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)? Was he still alive in the 24th century, the time of Picard (Stewart) and company*?

This film lives in a unique space in my brain. At a Star Trek Convention that summer, I managed to get a hold of the screenplay for the film for twenty dollars. It was such a wild boon, knowing what was going to happen in a movie months before its release. I was transfixed, and have been perhaps compulsively interested in screenwriting ever since**. I was struck by the interplay between Captain Kirk and Picard, two men who could understand something about each other that almost no one else could. I took the destruction of the Enterprise-D as a hit to the gut. That ship was the safest of safe places for seven years, and in this watching I was struck by the despair of the kids being evacuated during the destruction scene (even though that evacuation doesn’t really make any sense) still manages to hit me.

And with all of this fundamentally interesting stuff, the film just doesn’t work.

The time travel is all over the place, even more starkly noticeable as the film comes sandwiched between two of the better time travel stories the franchise has ever done, the aforementioned final episode “All Good Things…” and the next Next Generation film, Star Trek: First Contact (1996). 

The inclusion of not the whole original crew in the first reel, but instead just Scotty (James Doohan) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) feels off. The parts were clearly written for Bones and Spock, but instead the 90’s version of a control-F was done by way of a re-write. Why was Chekov so interested in taking over the medical care of the Lakul survivors? Why was he recruiting nurses out of the reporters? It boggles the mind why this scene didn’t get another pass, or there wasn’t a more concerted effort to make Nimoy, Kelley and the rest of the remaining crew more happy with the prospect of one last hurrah.

I can’t hate the film, but it is absolutely impossible to get over it’s more glaring flaws. Which, for an even-numbered film in the era when the even/odd dichotomy of Star Trek films still mattered, that’s not so bad.

Really? Had they not already made the episode in their third season, a re-worked version of “Yesterday’s Enterprise” might have been the perfect framework for a Kirk meets Picard story.

And it would have allowed the entire original crew to actually have things to do in the film, enough so that the actors might have been inspired to show up.

*Indeed, entire sections of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Rick Sternbach and Michael Okuda and the first edition of the Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael and Denise Okuda are devoted to some of these questions, to the point where I think those authors could have made a level-headed pitch at a story-by credit on this film. How do I know all of this? It was a weird childhood and there may have been some—properly researched, mind you—fan fiction written there in the 90s. Lay of me.

**It should bear mentioning that I also got a glimpse of the screenplay for Star Trek Nemesis (2002) months before that film was released via a leak on the internet and was filled with a melancholy that could only be countered by the hope that the film would improve in the directing or the editing. It wasn’t. It was somehow worse than the flimsy script. So, point for Generations on being an entertaining read, if an uneven final product.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Cast*: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, James Cromwell**, Alfre Woodard

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, yes… I have the most vivd memory of coming out of the theater in November 1996 getting picked up by my parents. When they asked me how it was, I said, “The greatest two hours*** of my life.” They said, “You’re young yet.” Nearly twenty-five years later, I’m still not entirely sure what they were talking about.

Did I Like It: See the above comment.

At their core, the four films based on The Next Generation are a mixed bag. The producers behind the various television series of the era maybe never quite got out of their television mindset, so one could argue that we just got four feature-length new episodes featuring an A-plot for Picard (Stewart) and a B-plot for Data (Spiner). The rest of the cast—the main draw for that section of the audience that was likely to buy multiple tickets—got a few pieces of business here and there.

But in 1996—the thirtieth anniversary of the franchise—all of the cylinders were firing, and thus, we were treated to Picard and company’s undisputedly greatest film. Like The Wrath of Khan (1982) before it, First Contact wisely mines one of the better television entries and makes a more epic sequel, while at the same time not vapidly mimicking the structure of that earlier, GOAT movie, like they did in the near-unwatchable Nemesis (2002). There are also plenty of references to Moby Dick.

And still, my opinion of the film has morphed considerably over the years. As I have with most Trek films, I walked out of the theater thinking it was perfect. I’ve been wrong every time. For years afterward, I came to think Picard’s plot on the starship exacting his revenge on the Borg was the real story, while the prepping of the flight of the Phoenix down on Earth was filler. I now think of Picard’s Ahab-ing as mostly fine, if a little redundant of action star schtick which feels ill-fitting for Stewart. The real genius of the film is with Cochrane (Cromwell).

He’s a lout. A drinker. A low-level sex maniac. He has a passing interest in his work and legacy, but only in how much it will keep him in the company of his vices.

By most honest accounts, Gene Roddenberry—the creator of Star Trek—was the same way. Producer Rick Berman stated that the idea behind the film was to do something about the creation of Star Trek (i.e., the first meeting of Vulcan and Human, and the introduction of FTL flight).

He wasn’t kidding. This movie is about the genesis of the notion of Star Trek, and at the helm of this great idea is a creator history would lionize, but who was just as imperfect as the rest of us.

*It’s one of the near-fatal flaws of the Next Generation films that they never quite found enough for the rest of the cast—especially the funnier-than-she-gets-credit-for Gates McFadden—to do in their four entries into the canon.

**So I’m sitting at my computer, and for the life of me my mind is blanking on the actor who played the father of warp drive. It eventually came to me, but it has to be a testament to the actor that I don’t think of his name or any of the other numerous roles he’s played. He simply is Zefram Cochrane. Which is all the more impressive as legend has it the first choice for the role was none other than admitted Star Trek mega fan Tom Hanks, but he sadly had to back out as he was focused on directing That Thing You Do (1996). He would have been great, too, but here we are.

***The runtime is 111 minutes, but I’m sure the trailers were top-notch.

X-Men (2000)

Director: Bryan Singer*

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Anna Paquin

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, gosh. The memories. With driver’s license freshly in hand, this was the movie I first went to see under my own power. My, how far we’ve come. I am, of course, looking in your direction, Dark Phoenix (2019).

Did I Like It: There are, of course parts that don’t age so gracefully (see that footnote), but by and large the things that were done on purpose in this film work, while the things that are simply a reality of when and under what circumstances the film was made, not so much. But then again, I’m thinking that way back in the last year of the old millennium, the ratio of things that work to those that don’t probably stayed about the same. 

If Toad (Ray Park, living his best life in the late 90s/early aughts, to be sure) stole Cyclops’ (James Marsden) visor during the fight at the train station, why does he have it back as they head to Liberty Island? I mean, I guess, he has spares… But, still.

Now that the one true nitpick I have for the film is out of the way (excluding any toads struck by lightning), let’s get to the heart of the movie. And it is truly in the heart where this series is launched with the best of intentions. As an action movie, it is a product of it’s time, trying to echo some of the sensibilities of The Matrix (1999), but only managing to mimic, not capture the leather-clad wire-jumping spirit of that film. The plot is also insubstantial to the point of floating into the wind under the slightest scrutiny. It’s a 90s movie at the beginning of a decade that wanted something else. We’d have to wait for the sequel for the series to fully deliver on that promise, and another fifteen-or-so years for it to squander that promise and go out with a whimper.

And so the film is left with casting and the interplay between the characters. Here, it is successful. Patrick Stewart reaches his cinematic destiny, bringing all of his stern, yet patient leadership (and GOAT sitting in a chair skills) as Xavier. Ian McKellan might have seemed like an odd choice to play Magneto (in fact, the sort of Adonis-like Michael Fassbender seems more on-point), but he plays the man vacillating between compromise-averse crusader and egomaniacal tyrant with a deftness that any lesser actor may have whiffed. Anna Paquin… Well, there’s something about Anna Paquin’s Rogue that reminds me of thoughts I might have had as a younger man, that might be unseemly now, although they would have been age-appropriate at the time. Let’s just say that she inhabits the vulnerability of the role fully, and I really like scarves.

And then there’s Hugh Jackman, who arrived as if from nowhere in this film as a fully-formed movie star. He almost didn’t have the role, and it’s hard not to think of how bereft Dougray Scott must feel at having just missed out on what would be a 17-year franchise and a career as one of the most bankable movie stars of all time. It might be reductive to say Jackman glowers around the film like a young Clint Eastwood, but his magic is in the interaction with the other characters. His absolute infatuation with Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) feels real, his big-brother affection for Rogue is earned in every frame, and I absolutely believes that he just doesn’t care for James Marsden.

Is this a thin film in retrospect? Probably. But it delivered on the things that could work in an X-Men film, and left the stuff that didn’t have much of a hope of translating for later entries in the series.

*It’s just going to be ugly to have to watch his credit come up in films from here on in. It is of some small comfort that, in retrospect, some of his best films may have had less to do with his contribution than we might have been previously led to believe.

Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Cast: Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Jonathan Frakes, F. Murray Abraham

Have I Seen it Before: Over twenty years ago, I opted out a date with my first girlfriend to ensure I saw this one opening weekend. So yeah.

Did I Like It: How many new episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation are we likely to get? Don’t answer that question just yet… Picard is coming back…

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “How Could No One Else Like These Movies? Part Two, But With No Electric Boogaloo.” published 04/30/2017.

I’m not sure why the ninth film in the series—the fourth to feature The Next Generation crew—gets shit on so much. This is especially true when the series also includes the two-plus hour sleeping pill that is The Motion Picture (1979), the sloppy ode to mountain climbing that is The Final Frontier (1989)*, and that testament to uninspired mediocrity that was Nemesis (2002).

The most frequent complaint I hear about this movie is that, after the epic battle across time and space in First Contact (1996)**, this follow-up is less an actual movie, and more a very basic, episode of the television series upon which it is based. To that, I ask: Why is that a problem? If anyone reading this has ever taken in any random episode of The Next Generation*** and not enjoyed it, then, maybe your problem with Insurrection is that you just don’t like Star Trek that much.

The ancillary material for the film is even better. The late Michael Piller wrote a no-holds-barred account of his experiences writing the screenplay. It’s one of the truly great screenwriting books, ranking right up there with William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade. It’s only recently available, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

*Which I actually kind of like, and almost made its way onto this list, except that I get that the movie doesn’t work for the most part. 

**I realize now that movies may have began and ended for me in 1996.

***First season being the only exception, naturally.