- My options are limited to any movies in my dvd collection that I have either not yet seen or I have not yet opened (though these may be movies that I’ve seen in theaters, on cable, or otherwise).

- The selection of a movie must be random.

- I’m not allowed to veto a movie unless it’s truly inappropriate at the time.  For example, I could skip The Lost Boys if one of my friends had just been attacked by vampires, but not if I was just disinterested.  Basically, unless there’s a really good excuse, I’ve just got to suck it up and watch.  (Hopefully this won’t be a problem, since I do like most of the movies I buy.)

This last rule got tested from the very start, as my random number generator produced a result of Apollo 13: a good movie, but one I’ve seen several times before.  I’m a bit disappointed that it wasn’t something a little more off the beaten path.  Still, the rules must be followed.

And on the whole, it’s hard to complain.  Apollo 13 is actually rather appropriate, given that its a Tom Hanks-Ron Howard partnership, and I’ll likely be watching their latest partnership, Angels & Demons, in the coming days.  And Apollo 13 has a hell of a cast: Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and Ed Harris are hard to beat.  Even the bit players are great.  Among those I spotted are Rance and Clint Howard, Ron’s father and brother respectively; Xander Berkeley; Loren Dean, star of Mumford, one of my favorite movies; Christian Clemenson, better known as Socrates Poole of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (an excellent tv Western featuring the legendary Bruce Campbell); and the original non-Cylon, non-hot-Asian-chick Boomer, Herb Jefferson Jr..  Heck, B-movie king Roger Corman even has a cameo as a senator.

It’s a perfect storm of movie elements: great non-fiction story, set in outer space, top-flight director, A-list cast, bravery in the face of imminent death, and science geeks save the day.  Considering how boring this could have been – I mean, really, despite the stakes, it’s a movie about a bunch of nerdy white guys staring at computers for days on end – it’s truly gripping from start to finish.

Anyway, suffice to say, it’s a good flick.  Worth watching, even if it’s your fifth or sixth time doing so.

Jackman in a box

Rather than start out with a dvd off the shelf, I’m actually going to start with something that won’t be the norm.  It’s summer, after all, and that means it’s blockbuster season!  Explosions!  Lasers!  More explosions!  Ah, summer movies.  I do love them.  And what better way to kick off the blog than with a double bill of Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Let’s start with Wolverine, which I actually watched second, but is less interesting, sadly.  So, Hugh Jackman‘s back, reprising the pre-X-Men Wolvie, before he got his metallic skeleton, before he even grew up.  After summing up some 120 years of backstory over the opening ten minutes, largely consisting of Jackman’s Wolverine and Liev Schreiber‘s Sabretooth (though he’s never called that) slaughtering people from the US Civil War to Vietnam, we end up with Wolverine joining a secret mutant cadre, quitting it, having his girlfriend killed by Sabretooth, and then going on a rampage.  That’s pretty much it.

I do like Hugh, but this flick seemed to just be an excuse for the producers to parade comic book characters, one after another, for the sake of the fan boys.  Look, there’s Gambit!  Hey, there’s Cyclops!  Meh.  Take away the cameos, and all you’ve got is Wolverine growling a lot at Sabretooth.  Normally, that’d be enough – Hugh’s obviously a charismatic guy, and I’m a big fan of Liev.  But unfortunately, Hugh’s prequel Wolvie still reeks too much of the pansy Wolverine of the third X-Men movie.  Yeah, he’s angrier in this one than he is in that, but he still ends up spending more time looking mopy and emo than a mutant berserker ought to.  (Plus, could the close-ups of Wolverine’s CG claws look any crappier?  Oy vey.)

All in all, it’s worth seeing if you’re a fan, though if you’re not a twelve-year-old comic geek, you might be a little peeved with the shallowness of it all.  (By the way, if you are a fan, stay through the credits.  There are two codas, though neither is great.  Also, you’ll be amused to know that Deadpool’s getting his own movie.  If you saw his fate in Wolverine, you’ll understand my puzzlement….) If you’re not a fan, this movie isn’t going to change your mind.

As for Star Trek… well, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and all the rest don’t need to worry about getting a paycheck ever again, because all those actors are going to be making oodles of sequels.  It’s just as good as every single review out there says it is.  (Well, not every single review.  The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane didn’t like it much.  But I’m under the impression that if you write movie reviews for The New Yorker, you’re required to be an elitist dick.)  It definitely feels like Star Trek, with all the optimism a quasi-military utopia can pump out, but it manages to mix in all the quick cuts and colorful special effects that a summer popcorn flick needs without tainting the mythos.

The plot is actually quite clever, completely dismantling any need to rely on the canon of the original series.  Basically, the bad guys (led by a cranky Romulan named Nero, played by former Hulk and Israeli agent Eric Bana) screw up the timeline by killing Kirk’s dad (though Kirk and his mom, who is much to my amusement played by House M.D.’s Jennifer Morrison, escape safely), resulting in a new, completely distinct alternate reality.  Not that it’s an ironclad explanation – Leonard Nimoy‘s “Spock Prime” (seriously, that’s his credit) somehow manages to exist in the universe even after the timeline he’s from is effectively eliminated.  But if you already buy transporters and human/Vulcan interbreeding (aw yeah, hot pon-farr, baby), a little temporal paradox isn’t going to be much of an issue.

No human/Vulcan half-breeds allowed.

Still, even without the canon, Star Trek would be a failure if the new cast didn’t do the original justice.  Fortunately, they do, at least as much as they can do in a two-hour movie.  Quinto’s Spock has everything that Nimoy’s original did, except for the maturity (which is to his benefit here, really).  Chris Pine manages to be his own Kirk, but he’s still the womanizing, fight-ready rogue of Shatner legend.  I’m pretty sure that Karl Urban is channeling DeForest Kelley.  (I certainly didn’t see any of  Eomer in Urban’s McCoy.)    And Zoe Saldana stands out as Uhura (probably because she’s the only cast member without a Y chromosome).

The rest of the cast is largely relegated to the background and the odd bit of comic relief, but they’re all good enough.  Really, all they had to do was to avoid contradicting the original, and they don’t.  Maybe with the inevitable sequel, they can do something other than looking Asian/speaking with a funny accent.  (Actually, that’s unfair to John Cho, who got to do some Sulu-esque sword fighting.  And, to his credit, he didn’t try to do George Takei‘s voice.)  On the whole, no one disappointed.  Well, no one except the shapely green-skinned cadet, whose make-up was less convincing of that of 30 years ago.

Really, unless you’re a crazed Shatner-worshipper, you’ll enjoy this new Star Trek.  It takes the essence of the original and infuses it with the cinematic kineticism of the modern summer blockbuster.  What’s not to love?