Category: Movies

Yesterday I took one of my daughters on a date… we saw the new Star Trek.

Wow! What a great film.

At first, I was a little hesitant to bring any of my kids to it because of the preview. The preview shows a girl undressing, some pretty passionate kissing… it hinted that the film had some pretty sensual moments. I asked others who had seen the film and the consensus was, “What you saw in the preview is about all there was in the entire film.”

They were right. In one scene Kirk is making out with a girl (who happens to be all green) who is wearing a bikini type outfit, apparently her alien underwear. While making out, her room-mate comes home. Kirk hides under the bed and the room-mate starts to strip down to underwear (the exact scene you see in the preview). That was the end of it.

I’ll be honest. I’ve seen much worse on TV.

I watched the film with my 11-year-old and had no regrets. We looked at each other during the underwear scene and sighed (we have had the talk before about how Hollywood somehow finds the need to want to include that stuff to sell tickets. No words were necessary. My daughter knew). The film was really fun overall.

I’m not a Trekkie by any means. I watched the TV show when I was a kid (my favorite episode was the one where Kirk got stranded on the planet with the lizard creature. See! A Trekkie would probably know that creature’s name!), and I watched all the films when they came out. The first film stunk (soooooo boring), Wrath of Khan was cool, then they all sort of blended together (although I kind of remember liking the one with the whales- which one was that? Four?). I never tried the new series, although my brother was a big fan of the Next Generation. I heard it was really good- maybe I’ll have to check it out.

This movie made me curious to go back and see some of the original TV show. It was so fun to see the young versions of each character: Bones, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, etc.

And let me just say, JJ Abrams (the director) is just brilliant. The film started with such realistic action and strong performances. Watching this now, it would be truly difficult even for Star Wars fans to go back and watch Mark Hamill say lines like, “But I was going to the Tashi station to pick up some power converters!”

Plus.. the cast was amazing: Zachary Quinto (Cyler from Heroes), Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana (under a bunch of makeup), Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz and Shawn of the Dead), Tyler Perry… and more. Wow.

Star Trek rocked.

Todd’s official revue of the film here.

Tuesday is the day new releases always hit the video store. The question I always have is… is there anything new actually worth watching?

This week I think there is.

Maybe I’m biased just because I really like this director- I admit that. But I really enjoyed the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The film stars Keanu Reeves (not my favorite actor), Jennifer Connelly (very good) and Jaden Smith (Will’s son… great young actor). This PG-13 film was totally clean. The rating was for “sci-fi violence.” As I said in my official movie review of this film, conservatives would probably have more problems with Shrek 3 than this film.

This isn’t my favorite movie, but it was really entertaining. And the aspect I enjoyed the most was something that this director excels at… he makes films that are entertaining, but also stimulate you to think. This film is a great discussion piece about “redemption.”

I talk a little about the film and the director in my movie review, linking my interviews with him:

Is it possible to entertain audiences and stimulate them to think about important issues without sacrificing the film’s enjoyability or coming across as preachy? I guess 2008 is the year to do it. Wall-E did it, and so did The Day the Earth Stood Still, Scott Derrickson’s remake of the 1951 classic.

I really like the director of this film. I interviewed him when his The Exorcism of Emily Rose came out two years ago. Scott is an interesting guy. He’s a Biola grad (a Christian school in Southern California) with films like Hellraiser on his director’s resume. So when he tackled “Emily Rose,” I was excited to talk with him about the horror medium. After all, a bunch of Christians would consider horror films pure evil. Right? Scott and I had an interesting dialogue about that very subject.

Note: The link above is to my first interview with Scott. I actually got a chance to interview him a second time and released it as a special podcast. If you haven’t listened to that quick 15 minute podcast where I interview Scott… I encourage you to. We talk about everything from working with Jaden Smith, to the development of his next project, Paradise Lost. (How cool is that!)

Pop some popcorn and rent this one this week.

Three movies are releasing within just a few days of each other, with Twilight leading the pack, Bolt trailing in second, and Bond… well… we will see Tuesday.

Twilight is the only one of the three that required a “special midnight release” so that all the crazed teenage fans could pick up their copy the moment both the hour and the minute hand struck twelve! (My two cents about all the Twilight hype in my last blog) “E! Online reported that more than 3 million copies were gobbled up on the first day alone.

Wow. That’s a lot of 12 year old girls!

Bolt, the animated feature with the voice talents of John Travolta and Miley Cyrus, has a release day of Tuesday, but was already trickling out to the public when someone jumped/violated the release date last week– the guy at my local Blockbuster was letting it out to people Friday. We watched as a family again Friday night with some of our kids’ friends… great film. The hamster is classic!

I thoroughly enjoyed Bolt– a great film to watch with the whole family (my official review of it here).

Bond… Todd’s two cents here. We’ll see how it does Tuesday.