the m0vie blog

Star Trek: Voyager – Live Fast and Prosper (Review)

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Darren

Live Fast and Prosper is a reasonably adequate mid-tier episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

It is not awful. It has an interesting premise, with some interesting potential for development and exploration. It fits with some of the larger fascinations of Voyager – in particularly recurring themes of identity and narrative, and the intersection of the two. More than that, unlike a lot of Voyager episodes, it has a story that feels somewhat original. This is not a dull rehash of a familiar story, a shiny new exterior hastily assembled over a familiar storytelling engine.

“Get this… whatever it is… to Sickbay!”

At the same time, it is also not very good of itself. Although Live Fast and Prosper has an absolutely ingenious premise, it never seems to push itself beyond that point. It never makes the leap that the best stories make, from an interesting premise into a satisfying execution. Live Fast and Prosper is pretty much exactly the episode that every audience member would anticipate given the one-line plot description of “Voyager encounters a group of con artists who have been impersonating them for shady business deals.”

The result is an hour of television that is solid, if not impressive. Live Fast and Prosper feels like a middling delivery on a fantastic promise, to the point where its status as merely adequate is almost as severe a disappointment as some of the spectacular misfires around it.

Unfamiliar faces…

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: anxiety, con, con artist, dala, fake, hustle, identity, janeway, misdirect, self, star trek, star trek: voyager | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: China Salesman

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Darren

China Salesman is fascinating disaster.

China Salesman is not a good film by any measure, but it is strangely compelling. There is something intoxicating about the film, in spite of its myriad flaws – the awful script, the atrocious dubbing, the clumsy editing, the terrible performances, the muddled storyline, the abundance of nonsensical technobabble. Part of this is down to the sheer abundance of energy that director Tan Bing brings to proceedings. China Salesman whips and whirls, cranks and zooms, pans and swirls with a kinetic energy that renders these flaws almost bedazzling, offering an effect that in some ways evokes a bad trip.

The gun show.

However, China Salesman is perhaps most interesting as a mirror and a prism. It is, like Wolf Warrior II, very much the Chinese equivalent to those old patriotic eighties American action movies like Delta Force or Iron Eagle, the kind of populist nationalist cinema that is currently channeled through franchises like Transformers. As such, there is something intriguing in seeing the image that China Salesman projects into the world, as an assertion of multinational intent to the rest of the world and as a statement of patriotic self-image to the country itself.

China Salesman is terrible. It is also terribly interesting.

The old man and the Seagal.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Africa, China, china salesman, colonialism, film, mike tyson, Movie, non-review review, propaganda, Steven Seagal | 1 Comment »

82. Yojimbo (#113)

Posted on June 9, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and this week with special guest Chris Lavery, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode thrown in.

This time, Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

A wandering masterless samurai arrives in a small town divided between two rival gangs. Cannily and skillfully manipulating these opposing forces, the samurai sets about ensuring that he might be the only winner in this bitter turf war.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 113th best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: akira kurosawa, chris lavery, classic, samurai, samurai film, the bodyguard, the man with no name, toshiro mifune, western, yojimbo | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 3, Episode 2 (“Paper Clip”)

Posted on June 8, 2018 by Darren

A real pleasure to re-team with Tony Black to round out our coverage of “the unopened file” on The X-Cast, following on from our discussions of Anasazi and The Blessing Way. And this time, it’s an even stronger line-up. The wonderful Chris Knowles is joins us for the discussion of the final part of the season-bridging trilogy.

As ever, a huge thrill to be a part of this. Anasazi, The Blessing Way and Paper Clip represent a landmark moment for The X-Files as a television show, and it’s been an honour to talk through those changes with Tony. However, Paper Clip is something special because it’s clear how much Chris loves this episode. There are few pleasures in life quite as satisfying as sitting down with somebody to talk about something they love.

I’ll be back on The X-Cast later in the season, to the point that I think the members of the Patreon may already have access to one of my own smaller side projects as part of the podcast. However, it was a delight to get to talk about three episodes that are so close to the core of what The X-Files is for a combined runtime of close to four hours.

The truth is in here. You can listen to the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: america, anasazi, chris knowles, conspiracy, freudian, history, mytholgoy, nazis, paper clip, podcast, second world war, the unopened file, the x-files, tony black | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Good Shepherd (Review)

Posted on June 7, 2018 by Darren

Good Shepherd is a terrible execution of a potentially interesting premise.

There is something interesting in speculating what the Star Trek universe must look like for those characters who exist outside the senior staff of a given series. This premise has been explored and touched upon in a number of episodes; most notably in the basic premise of Star Trek: Discovery, the primary plots of Lower Decks and Learning Curve, even the sections of Strange New World focusing on Novakovich and Cutler. Still, these are only a handful of episodes in a franchise that spans half a century and over seven hundred installments.

Looking out for her crew…

As such, the basic plot of Good Shepherd is compelling. The teaser visuals the appeal of such a story in a playful and innovative way, with the camera following a command all the way from the top of the ship to the bottom; from Janeway’s ready room to Astrometrics to Engineering to the lowest viewing port on the ship. It is an interesting way of demonstrating how anonymous and disconnected individuals can feel, even on board a ship with a crew numbering around one hundred and fifty. What does it feel like to be anonymous, on a ship as isolated as Voyager?

Unfortunately, Good Shepherd awkwardly bungles the question. In doing so, it fails to provide any satisfying answers.

Running rings…

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: affirmative action, anomie, crew, demons, ennui, good shepherd, janeway, monsters, religion, star trek, star trek: voyager, Starfleet, training, voyager | 10 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Jurassic World – Fallen Kingdom

Posted on June 5, 2018 by Darren

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is an intriguing and compelling mess of a film. It is shrewd and clever, if never entirely human.

Director J.A. Bayona might be the first director since Spielberg to put his own unique slant on the Jurassic Park franchise, to move with just enough confidence and faith in his own stylistic sensibilities to escape the shadow of the legendary director who turned a pulpy novel into a beloved family classic. Bayona does that by allowing his own stylistic sensibilities to shine through, to embrace his own interest and to engage with the material on his own terms.

Dino escape.

Fallen Kindom walks a fine line. It is very much a creature grown in a laboratory to satisfy the demands of the larger franchise. There are elements here that exist purely because they are expected, because they are signifiers of what a “Jurassic Park movie” should look like, including both returning characters and new characters fashioned after familiar archetypes. At the same time, there is a coy and wry self-awareness to Fallen Kingdom that was sorely lacking from Jurassic World, a cynicism about its own nature that integrates rather neatly into its larger worldview.

Although it may be damning with faint praise, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is easily the best Jurassic Park movie since Jurassic Park: The Lost World, the film in the franchise with which it shares most of its DNA.

Things are heating up.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: awe, colin trevorrow, fallen kingdom, horror, j.a. bayona, jordan peterson, jurassic park, jurassic world, monsters, non-review review, nostalgia, review, spielberg, wonder | 10 Comments »

81. Django Unchained (#61)

Posted on June 2, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT, with the occasional bonus episode thrown in.

This time, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

A “Southern” set against the backdrop of the southern states in the lead-up to the Civil War. Freed by the German bounty hunter King Schultz, Django embarks upon a mission to free his wife Broomhilda from the clutches of slave-owner Calvin Candie. Together, Schultz and Django find themselves entering the heart of darkness.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 61st best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: Django, django unchained, obama, oppression, podcast, pop culture, quentin tarantino, racism, Slavery, The 250, underground | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The X-Cast – Season 3, Episode 1 (“The Blessing Way”)

Posted on June 1, 2018 by Darren

I was thrilled to join Tony Black to launch the third season of The X-Cast, a podcast taking a tour through Chris Carter’s The X-Files.

I’ve been lucky enough to guest on a number of episodes, including the one covering the second season finale, Anasazi. After finishing up the second season, Tony took a bit of a break to rush through a podwatch of the entire series; I was thrilled to be invited to take part in that, commenting on episodes from Aubrey to Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man to Never Again to The Post-Modern Prometheus to The Unnatural and beyond. It was a real pleasure to be a part of that. And to contribute to Tony’s coverage of the eleventh season, including the final two episodes, maybe forever, Nothing Lasts Forever and My Struggle IV.

However, with Tony having covered all of that, we jumped right back into the regularly scheduled coverage. It was an absolute pleasure to talk about The Blessing Way, which is the third season premiere. I’ve gone on record in the past as both being a tremendous fan of the third season as a whole, which I think is one of the best twenty-odd episode seasons of television ever produced. I’ve also been a bit skeptical of The Blessing Way at the same time. I hope I’m fair to it here, where I confess why it’s both one of my least favourite episodes of the season and something that I’m very glad exists in this form.

As even, Tony was a fantastic host, and we had a fun and wide-ranging discussion about everything from abstract concepts of “truth” to why we love the Well-Manicured Man so much to the recurring theme of mirroring and doubling that plays through this three-parter in particular and the X-Files in general. Check it out the episode here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Podcasts!, The X-Files | Tagged: mythology, the blessing way, the unopened file, the x-cast, the x-files, tony black | Leave a comment »

Star Trek: Voyager – Child’s Play (Review)

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Darren

Interesting, isn’t it?

What?

With all their technology, their opportunity to explore the galaxy, the thing they want most is to get home.

A Trek away from the Stars.

Child’s Play is a fascinating episode of Star Trek: Voyager, in that it might be seen as a firm rejection of some of the show’s core conservatism.

Voyager has always been the most conservative of the Star Trek franchise, the series most likely to panic about gang violence for two whole seasons starting in Caretaker or to rail against immigration in Displaced or to voice its anxieties about refugees in Day of Honour. More than that, what are episodes like Remember or Distant Origin or Living Witness or Memorial but expressions of literal anxieties about the erosion of the certainty of history to postmodernism and moral relativism? At its core, Voyager is a series about nostalgia, about the yearning to recapture what once was, how the only journey is the journey home.

“Everything the light touches is your kingdom…”

Child’s Play is interesting as a firm rejection of the idea of the traditional family unit in favour of a more modern (and less rigidly defined) idea of a “found family.” It is a story about how a child’s best interests do not always lie with their biological parents, and about how some of the strongest and most loving bonds in a young person’s life can be forged by chance rather than biology. Child’s Play is essentially an ode to the kind of complicated family dynamics that were entering the mainstream at the turn of the millennium, a staunch defense of a liberal and inclusive definition of family.

More than that, the episode also seems to be making several very pointed jabs at Voyager‘s traditionally conservative outlook.

“I want to be out there…”

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Filed under: Voyager | Tagged: abuse, borg, conservatism, family, found family, Guilt, home, icheb, love, nostalgia, parents, seven of nine, Shame, star trek, star trek: voyager | 12 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Fahrenheit 451

Posted on May 31, 2018 by Darren

Fahrenheit 451 certainly makes a strong case for being “the movie of the moment.”

Adapted loosely from Ray Bradbury’s iconic and beloved science-fiction novel, a piece of source material that famously bewildered François Truffaut during his first and only interaction with Hollywood movie-making, writer and director Ramin Bahrani perfectly positions Fahrenheit 451 as a piece of pop culture for the Trump era. Bahrani smartly retains almost as much of the aesthetic of the source material as he updates, making a strong case that Fahrenheit 451 is more than just an opportunistic broadside at the current political moment.

“I’m going to burn it all.”

Nevertheless, Bahrani makes a number of changes to the story, and turns up the volume on particular story elements, to align his televisual adaptation for the current cultural moment. Ray Bradbury famously claimed that he wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a criticism of television, creating an engaging irony within this adaptation. Bahrani shifts the emphasis slightly to position his adaptation as a criticism of the internet, in particular modern internet subcultures and the way it decreases the audience’s attention span. There are live streams, in-home assistants that are always listening, emojis, and online “fans.”

This is certainly a valid approach to the material, and it’s to the credit of Bahrani as a writer and a director that he manages to build a world that is obviously of a piece with that created in the source material written sixty-five years ago and which works as a pointed commentary on modern cultural discourse. With its brutalist architecture, its cold digital cinematography, its compelling central performances, its suggested alternative history, and its ominous ambient lighting providing the occasional splash of vivid colour, Fahrenheit 451 creates a fictional world that is compelling and engaging.

Lighting a spark…

Unfortunately, the film’s narrative is nowhere near as engaging as its setting. Bahrani cannily borrows characters, premises and sequences from the source novel, but he largely reworks the story. Fahrenheit 451 is restructured as a more conventional science-fiction narrative than the original book, complete with apocalyptic stakes and a macguffin to drive the plot. The plot of Fahrenheit 451 is generic science-fiction fluff, a pale imitation of the familiar rhythms of movies like The Matrix or Equilibrium or Aeon Flux. It is almost as though Bahrani has internalised Bradbury’s critique of television as dumb and simple and broad.

As a result, Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t work nearly as well as it should. It is a beautiful piece of work from an aesthetic perspective, but one employed in a very crude and unsatisfying manner.