On December 7th, 1979, I was in a movie theater in Gallup, New Mexico, waiting to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture for the first time. Not the best Star Trek movie, perhaps, but it was the first. I recall watching it that first time and being amazed. Sure, I had seen Star Wars and Close Encounters, but nothing was as cool at Star Trek on the big screen.

I saw the movie another 21 times in the theater that season (I miss the days when movies were in theaters for many months, rather than a few weeks), more than any movie before or after. I’m sure I drove my parents crazy: I was seeing it at least once a week, if not more. I had the action figures, the Happy Meal toys, the board game (which I still play now and again), the soundtrack (on 8-track, actually, though eventually on nearly every format), the novelization, etc. To me, the movie was an event.

HDNet has been showing it now and again, so I’ve watched it another three to four times in the last few weeks. I’ll also be watching it tonight, to once again celebrate one of my favorite movies.

Certainly my favorite scene of the movie (and one of my all-time favorite scenes in any movie) is the reveal of the Enterprise. Yes, the movie spends around 7 minutes on it, but it is so perfect: we’re seeing the Enterprise through Kirk’s eyes, after a long absence. Jerry Goldsmith’s score shines. At the 5 minute mark below, we see the full-frontal shot of the Enterprise: I always get a chill up my spine when watching that scene (or even when listening to the score).

So, Happy 30th Birthday, Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

The Good

The Bourne Ultimatum: Wow, a trilogy of movies that’s good from the first to the third. You don’t see that often enough. This is an action move done right.

Justice League: New Frontier: Happily surprised how big a role the Martian Manhunter had, though disappointed that he really didn’t do much, considering his powers. The voice casting in this movie was terrific.

Eastern Promises: We rented this because my wife is a big Viggo fan and I’m a big Cronenberg fan. Neither of us were disappointed.

The Okay

Cloverfield: After all the hype, this was simply a basic monster film, full of noise and shaky cam, with characters doing dumb things. And yet, it was a nicely made action-suspense film. Still, Gamera would have kicked his ass with a plasma-formed foot.

Resident Evil (1-3): Not as bad as I expected, as long as I kept my brain from thinking. I’m a sucker for Milla movies, I admit.

The Bad

I Am Legend: Gah. So much money spent on so little. When will filmmakers realize that special effects just can’t make a shit script smell any better?

Live Free or Die Hard: How lame is it that John McClane can’t even use his trademark phrase in this PG-13 mess? Really lame.

30 Days of Night: Based on a comic series that I haven’t read, but probably should. I know there’s a certain amount of disbelief suspension that must be made for these types of survival horror movies, but really, it seems that if the characters had IQs above 70, these movies would be about 20 minutes long.

Atonement: I always hate it when overwrought, overacted movies are praised to high heaven.

• Watching Resident Evil in HD. Zombies and Milla! I know it is a bad movie, but c’mon, zombies and Milla!
• Playing Last Night on Earth, a fun zombie game. Dibs on the zombie side!
• Waiting to see what Polite Dissent has in store for Peeps this year. The Legion of Super-Peeps will be hard to top.
• I also tend to watch Godspell on Easter, because watching Jack Bristow from Alias dressed as a hippie Superman reaches me deep in my atheist heart.

As always, let’s remember the reason for the season:

• Zombie Jesus
• Zombie Jesus at Uncyclopedia
• The Passion of Zombie Jesus

However, there’s a much greater wealth of content on the various HD channels these days, and with a TivoHD, I can record a heck of a lot of HD content without worrying about either format: I’ve got Robocop, Iron Giant, and a slew of great movies recorded from Showtime, HDNet, AMC HD, and many others. And, unlike Blu-Ray at the moment, there’s a lot more classic movies on the HD cable channels.

So in the long run, I’m not sure how successful Blu-Ray will be: downloads via PS3, Xbox 360, Apple TV, and Amazon are likely to be the wave of the future. Hmm, I wonder if I should record Knight Rider in HD tonight…

If you can’t find silliness in the premise, then I suggest you read no further: I can’t help you. It’s likely that you thought The Core and Mission to Mars were paragons of science-fiction, or that Bruce Willis really could save us all from an asteroid. You are too far gone to help.

Now, for all you others, I’ll assume that you’ve stopped laughing. Oddly, if they had gone with a premise that was a little more realistic, it might not have been such a bad movie. It might have been average, even. Let’s meet the crew of the ship:

• Kaneda, the captain
• The guy who played Scarecrow as Kapa, the science guy. I’ll be calling him Scarecrow
• The guy who played the Human Torch as the asshole military guy
• The love interest girl Cassie, who was in 28 Weeks Later, I think
• Other expendable guys and girls, including the woman who likes plants more than people, the cowardly second in command, and the guy who seems to have a fetish for sunlight; they all die

As we know from this type of movie (and from other movies like Titanic), it’s never enough that a ship is sinking, or that a chunk of rock is going to hit the Earth, or that the sun is slowly dying (way, way, way too early): no, there has to be all sorts of other shit going on. In the case of Sunshine, we’ve got a previous mission to the sun that lost contact with Earth seven years earlier. Since two McGuffins are better than one, that ship reappears. This causes the following extra stupidity:

• Damage to a critical part of the ship that’s always likely to be damaged, with no way to access beyond the requisite spacewalk. Said spacewalk kills the captain.
• During the spacewalk, the oxygen garden is destroyed: there’s no way to complete the mission without the other ship’s oxygen
• While aboard the other ship, someone sabotages the airlock, leading to two more deaths.
• The guy who made a mistake causing the initial damage kills himself before the Human Torch can kill him (they need the extra oxygen).
• The last survivor of the other ship is now a crazed, super-strong serial killer, who starts stalking the other crew after sabotaging the ship’s computer.
• In keeping with the edict that critical parts of the ship are only accessible in ways that will kill you, the Human Torch has to dive into super-cold liquid to restore the ship’s computers. He dies.

I could go on, but I don’t have the strength. After the oxygen garden is destroyed, it’s calculated that there’s only enough oxygen for 4 people to make it to the mission’s end: it seems to me, though, that they were wasting a shitload of oxygen to pressurize unnecessary parts of the ship (including a warehouse sized area containing all the fissile material from the Earth).

Scarecrow, apparently, is the only guy who can arm all that nuclear goodness, too. Nothing like having single points of failure. The funny thing is that the Human Torch KNOWS that Scarecrow is the only one with the requisite knowledge, yet still "volunteers" Scarecrow for the extremely dangerous spacewalk. Huh?

The movie devolves into a slasher picture towards the end, and the Earth, of course, is saved. Luckily, everyone on board both ships is dead by the end of the movie (unless I missed any after end credits resurrection scene; I would not be surprised if this turkey had one). To me, that’s a happy ending.

• Starts out as a whiny kid
• Big moment in life: seeing his dad beheaded (I always wanted his dad’s head to fall out of the helmet when he picked it up)
• Uses his awesome skills to follow Han Solo
• Watches Darth Vader freeze Han Solo: way to not participate, Boba!
• Takes credit for capturing Han Solo when turning him over to Jabba, despite not really doing anything

And, of course, the ultimate Boba Fett moment, sealing his reputation as the most fearsome and formidable bounty hunter the galaxy has ever seen:

• Gets taken out by a recently unfrozen, blind, loud Han Solo, who accidentally smacks Fett’s rocketpack on, causing the most fearsome and formidable bounty hunter the galaxy has ever seen to flail his arms and legs around before getting eaten by a hole with teeth.

I’m sure his dad would have been proud, his son having a much lamer death. I’m trying to think of a lamer bounty hunter than Boba Fett, and no one comes to mind. Well, there’s Dog, of course, but he’s real, so doesn’t count. I can’t wait to see what incredible feats Boba Fett performs in the TV series. Perhaps he can get horrible maimed while attempting to rescue a cat stuck in a tree, or maybe he can slip on a banana peel and break his hip while staking out a Jawa trailer park. The possibilities are endless.

Rise of the Silver Surfer manages to make the first Fantastic Four movie look good, a fantastic feat in itself. The plot is simple: the Silver Surfer comes to Earth to prepare it for eventual destruction by Galactus. Meanwhile, Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) and Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) are trying to get married. Hilarity ensues.

Okay, let’s quickly run down the things the movie gets right:

• Johnny and Ben are fun for the scant time they get together.
• The special effects are good, mostly.

And now, the bad stuff:

• Jessica Alba looks like someone scooped her brains out. Half the time, they put her in glasses, so that we think she’s smart. And she’s peroxided to the point of distraction.
• Galactus is a cloud. Really. And his big plan appears to be to have the Silver Surfer dig potholes all over the Earth.
• One of the big set pieces is saving a ferris wheel.
• No Ultimate Nullifier
• The special effects for Mr. Fantastic were, indeed, special. In the bad way.

There’s just so much bad in this movie. The comedy falls flat, the action is perfunctory, and the acting is mediocre. Avoid this.

The voice talent looks to be great. I’m especially excited that Lucy Lawless will finally be playing Wonder Woman (Hollywood missed an opportunity for a live action movie with her). Lots of other big names, as well, like David Boreanaz, Neil Patrick Harris, Miguel Ferrer (as J’onn Jonzz, below). I’m hoping it’s good.

They are already planning more movies, too. Next up, animated Judas Contract. A big thanks to The Anti-Boredom Team for the heads up!

Like most summer blockbusters, Transformers suffers from trying to cram two or three different movies into one. We’ve got Movie A, with a platoon of Army guys fighting the Decepticons; there’s Movie B, with Shia LaBeouf attempting to get laid; and Movie C, with hackers trying to solve the mystery of the Decepticons’ signal.

Movie C is the worst: they introduce 2-3 hackers (who are apparently at the beck and call of the U.S. military, because hackers are always helpful to authorities), only to drop two of those characters, add an annoying new hacker/comedy relief guy (who isn’t funny), then have them type a lot of crap on terminals. I love movie hackers who can find answers in five seconds that no one else can. There’s a lot of shouting "Cut the hardlines" in Movie C, like it meant something.

Movie A and B are equally bad. Truthfully, I don’t even remember any of the character names of the Army guys (there was guy with glasses who you knew was going to get killed, bald black guy, and guy who looks like Michael Biehn but isn’t). And Shia Labouf just makes me worry about how bad he’ll be in the new Indiana Jones movie.

Here are a few of the problems I had with the movie:

• Music totally ripped off the Terminator theme, and not in a winking, respectful way.
• Army guys big plan is to move the "All-Spark" (the McGuffin of the movie) from a fairly remote area to the middle of a busy city: had to have a place for massive collateral damage, I guess.
• Optimus Prime doesn’t show up until over an hour into the movie. WTF? It reminded me of another lame expensive movie: King Kong. It took over an hour for the title character to appear in that movie, too.
• Transformers taking the shape of crappy American cars. Autobots, brought to you by GMC/Pontiac.
• Related to the above: product placement up the wazoo. It seemed like every frame of this move had some product in it. It was visually tiring. Ebay, Xbox, Nokia, Ding Dongs, etc.
• At least two of the action set pieces revolve around making fricking phone calls. In fact, I think the reason they wanted to go to the big city was to make a phone call. That would make three, but I wasn’t paying any attention.

Ways this movie could have been improved:

• This movie is two and a half hours long and only needed to be about an hour. It actually would have been better if they replaced the movie with five episodes of the cartoon.
• Funnier if you mentally replace references to the All-Spark with Old Spice.
• Fire all the actors. And the writers. And the director.

At the end of the movie, our horny teen loser, having finally impressed the girl by shoving the All-Spark into Megatron’s chest, is making out with her. On top of his Transformer buddy’s hood. All the other Autobots are watching. It’s like they came from another planet to watch teens having sex (or to have teens have sex on top of them). Either way, that would have been a better movie.