Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was, box-office-wise, the apex of the Star Trek film franchise (although The Motion Picture sold more tickets). It’s amazing to think that this is the only Trek film to have grossed more than $100M at the box office. This is particularly notable today, when just having […]
Sometimes I want to curse the Wayans Brothers. Not that I have anything against their two “Scary Movie” films. The first is really good and the second is at least decent. Even the subsequent installments by Airplane! veteran David Zucker have their charm. But with their scattershot style of comedy, they […]
Okay, here’s where I may be bending the rules a bit. While I intended to only include theatrical films, I am willing to stretch the point for films that were intended for theatrical release only, for one reason or another, didn’t get one. One such case is the infamous 1994 film The Fantastic […]
It doesn’t speak well of Destination Moon that when I sat down to write this review I couldn’t remember a single thing about the movie. Now, as you should know by now, I’m behind in writing these reviews so there’s a bit of a gap between the time I view them and the time […]
I get a lot of flack from certain quarters for my fandom of the Fantastic Four film series (on display in my review of the first film). Perhaps I’m more forgiving because I love the original comics so much. But whatever the reason, I also really enjoyed the sequel, Fantastic Four: Rise of […]
Idiocracy is Mike Judge’s long-awaited followup to his cult hit film Office Space. And while, expectedly, it does not live up to the level of quality of that earlier film and there are many problems with the film as found, there are still some nice touches that make it worth watching at least once. […]
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is the theatrically-released pilot for the similarly named television show starring Gil Gerard as Buck and Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering. As I mentioned in my review, Flash Gordon (made around the same time) tried to recreate the comic strip on the big screen. Buck, on […]
I don’t have a whole lot to say about Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. It has always been my least favorite of the original crew “Star Trek” films. This is mainly because it feels to me like an obligatory film, not one that grew organically.
Wrath of Khan had proved that Star […]
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is the theatrical debut of the popular character better known for his Nickelodeon television series. It established the basic premise and characters, essentially making it like a longer episode of the show. (It was, in fact, produced as a way of forming a fanbase for the later show.)
We meet […]
Over twelve years ago, I visited my brother who was then living in Pennsylvania. He was going to school, so, naturally, he had a computer. After spending several days getting to know the machine, I came away with two bits of knowledge. First, I didn’t think I’d ever wrap my head around […]
Robots, like many other borderline films, does improve with multiple viewings. The problems with the film that I previously mentioned are still in full effect, but a lack of anticipation means that there is no chance of being let down like the first time.
I still can’t help but think that there was more potential […]
Flash Gordon adapts the classic Alex Raymond character with a style that is taken right out of the original comic strip. It was started as an answer to the successful Buck Rogers strip that had jump-started the sci-fi comic scene and their fates had always been entwined. Their respective movie serials had even […]
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the single greatest piece of Star Trek material ever created. I say that without fear of serious contradiction. It does everything that made the original Star Trek television series work and engages in none of the excesses and fanwank that marked later films and series.
And […]
Meet the Robinsons is the second film in what was meant to be Walt Disney Feature Animation’s new direction: CGI. After the monumental failure of Treasure Planet and the less than thrilling performance of Home on the Range, Disney was no longer going to produce traditionally animated films, instead they would produce “CGI” films, […]
Spaceballs is considered by many to be Mel Brooks’ last great film (or next-to-last, depending). Sure, there’s solid material in Robin Hood: Men in Tights and I personally think that Dracula: Dead and Loving It is underrated, but you find someone who will defend Life Stinks. Go on. I’ll wait…
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Nothing, huh? The […]
It’a hard to properly cover the influence of a film like Tron. While it was not a huge box office success, it provided inspiration for a generation of filmmakers who were taken by its innovative use of computer genertaed graphics.
But let’s ignore the film’s legacy for a moment and look at it as a […]
They really don’t come worse than The Beast of Yucca Flats. You know all those things people always cite when they talk about how bad Ed Wood was as a filmmakers? The cheap sets? The bad acting? The nonsensical dialogue? Night/Day transitions? Well The Beast of Yucca Flats has […]
For me, Prince of Space and Invasion of the Neptune Men will forever be linked due to their connected appearances on Mystery Science Theater 3000.* They both feature groups of children who befriend a mysterious outer space super-hero type, who helps save the world from invaders from space.
First up, Prince of Space tells of […]
When I previously reviewed Chicken Little last year, I covered many of the shortcomings in this 2005 Disney CGI animated film. It lacks cohesion, gets way too caught up in pop culture jokes and has far too much music for its own good.
But, as often happens, it has grown on me since then and […]
Treasure Planet should have been a big, fat success story for Walt Disney. It’s based on one of the best adventure stories of all time, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, it has incredible visuals and it features a strong voice cast. But, in the end, it was all for naught as the film […]
I, like many I’m sure, was introduced to The Wild World of Batwoman through its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000. But despite the uncut version appearing on the MST3K DVD, I had never bothered to watch it all the way through. Does it stand up un-MSTied? Sort of.
First, it’s important to […]
Star Trek: The Motion Picture brought back Captian Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and Dr. McCoy (DeForrest Kelley) ten years since they had left the small screen (or five if you count the animated series).
The problem is, ST: TMP is never quite able to recapture the essence of the show. It comes […]
THX 1138 is George Lucas’ theatrical expansion of his student film Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB . It is also the film that ruined Francis Ford Coppola’s first American Zoeptrope film studio.
But the film itself is great. It is, in many ways, the anti-Star Wars: a small, personal story of one person in […]
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is quirky. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is odd. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension is probably the strangest mainstream science fiction movie I’ve ever seen. I love it. But I can certainly understand why […]
Radar Men from the Moon is a late entry into the world of movie action serials and suffers heavily from an air of “been there, done that”. Radar Men from the Moon was made in 1952, when many major serial-producing studios had moved on, but Republic was still churning them out. (It was […]
I previously reviewed Fantastic Four for thelogbook.com (the review can be read here), so I won’t go into great detail, but I will say that I still really like this movie. It’s certainly not among the greats of the comic-book-to-big-screen field, but I think it’s a fun, entertaining movie.
Particularly, I like the interaction […]
The films that Ed Wood is best known for are undoubtedly those on which he collaborated with his freind Bela Lugosi: Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster and, most famously, Plan 9 from Outer Space. In 1994, director Tim Burton filmed a fictionalized version of the making of these films in Ed Wood.
Glen […]
Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. is the followup to the successful Dr. Who and the Daleks. Like its predecessor, Invasion is based on an original serial from the BBC TV series Doctor Who, in this case, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. Also like the first film, this one is a condensation of a […]
Okay, so Kung Pow! is not for everyone. It is, in the final analysis, an extremely silly movie. Writer/director/star Steve Oedekerk (of Ace Ventura, Jimmy Neutron and “Thumb” movie fame) bought the rights to Hong Kong action film Hu hao shuang xing (aka Tiger and Crane Fist or Savage Killers) and reworked the […]
Really, I don’t know what I was thinking. I had been seeing Andy Kaufman on SNL and had watched Man on the Moon, so I guess I wanted to see a bit more of him. Or maybe I was curious as to whether it was really as bad a film as I remembered. […]
This one’s kind of for the fans out there. Most of my thoughts on Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie are inevitably tied to my feelings on the show, so those of you unfamiliar with the series might not get most of the references.
Okay. MST3K: The Movie is the project that made Joel […]
I’m not going to lie to you. The main thing that drew me to Barbarella as a youth was the copious amounts of nudity. I mean, I had never seen a film that had so much casual nudity in it. There are women who are just naked for no particular reason from […]
Dr. Who and the Daleks is the big screen adaptation of the second Doctor Who serial, “The Daleks”. It takes a lot of liberties with the story, mostly with the characterization of the lead character, who is here known literally as “Dr. Who” (on the show, he is almost always called “The Doctor”) and […]
Humanoid Woman, or Cherez ternii k zvyozdam*, as it was in its native Russia, is best known to modern audiences for having been featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 during its first year, when it was on a local Minneapolis TV station KTMA. But its reputation in the Western World as a cheesy B-movie […]
Logan’s Run is the last of the great, pre-Star Wars sci-fi epics. The vast, clean sets and the (frankly) unrealistic look of the technology was the hallmark of 1960’s sci-fi (2001: A Space Oddysey notwithstanding) and I’ve always loved it. It’s very much the style that influenced the “Austin Powers” movies. But […]
You know, I held off watching another film way too long out of some weird sense of not wanting to watch something “unworthy”. But as time has gone on, I’m settling in to watching what I would’ve watched anyway.
First of all, I’ve been on a huge “Hitchhiker’s” kick since last year, when my sister […]
Film #001 - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Film #002 - Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Film #003 - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Film #004 - Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)
Film #005 - Star Wars: Episode V - The […]
Viewed December 29, 2006
Hellboy is a film adaptation of Mike Mignola’s cult comic book series. It tells of a demon brought forth by Nazis to be the key to a worldwide apocalypse, but is instead captured by American military forces and raised as a force for good.
When we meet up again with Hellboy (Ron […]
Viewed December 22, 2006
Beyond the Moon is the first of several films edited together from episodes of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. (Two other ones were featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000.)
This one introduces us to Rocky (Richard Crane) and the members of his team: Winky (Scotty Beckett), Griff (Leonard Penn) and Bobby […]
Viewed December 17, 2006
No Time for Nuts is a 3D animated short included on the DVD release of Ice Age: The Meltdown which, like Gone Nutty before it, stars the “sabre-tooth squirrel” Scrat. This one involves Scrat coming across a time machine and travelling all through time in chase of his constantly-on-the-move one remaining […]
Viewed November 28, 2006
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut is a project I feel like I’ve waited for my whole life. (In reality, I only learned about it five or six years ago.) I could go on and on about why I loved this movie and why it’s so much better than the […]
Viewed November 12, 2006
Boy, I didn’t care for The Iron Giant. I thought I would, given that it was directed by Brad Bird, who would later direct The Incredibles. But whereas The Incredibles is an intelligent look at what defines individuality in the world, The Iron Giant (which shares some of the same […]
Viewed October 28, 2006
Superman: Brainiac Attacks is a straight-to-video animated movie that carries on stylistically from Superman: The Animated Series while reworking the basic characterizations. In fact, these changes to the characters has caused quite a stir amongst fans of the series, who feel that this movie doesn’t properly follow the precedents set.
Okay, I […]
Viewed September 25, 2006
The Reluctant Astronaut is another Don Knotts vehicle that features Knotts as the hapless, but loveable, loser who finds himself in over his head. This time, he’s Roy, the timid son of an ex-army man. His father wants him to do great things, so signs Roy up for the space […]
Viewed September 8, 2006
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the airing of the first episode of Star Trek, I watched the only theatrical film that I had not yet seen: Star Trek: Nemesis. Now, I’m not a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation (sorry, Earl), so I didn’t have high expectations. […]
Viewed August 22, 2006
CQ is a love letter to 1960s European cinema by Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford Coppola). It takes place in 1969 France and tells the story of Paul, a young filmmaker who has come there to make “important” films. His major work is a document of his life, where […]
Viewed August 15, 2006
Now, I’m not a big fan of the X-Men films. But, then again, I’ve never been a big fan of the X-Men. I’ve never been able to buy the central conceit that mutants can be compared to other oppressed groups (take your pick). The problem with the comparison for […]
Viewed August 14, 2006
As you may know, Toy Story 2 began its life as an intended straight-to-video release, until Disney got a look at what Pixar was cooking up and upgraded the production to a theatrical release. But eventually Disney did produce a straight-to-video movie featuring the characters of Toy Story. […]
Viewed August 12, 2006
Robots is Blue Sky Studios’ follow-up to their 2002 breakthrough film Ice Age. It doesn’t quite live up to the earlier film, but is entertaining, certainly looks good and will please younger audiences.
Robots is a bit more of a formulaic movie than either Ice Age or Ice Age: The Meltdown. […]
Viewed July 20, 2006
After the end of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry spent most of the 1970s trying to get another project going. He came up with several ideas, but one he kept returning to was the idea of future distopia and the man from the past who tries to bring peace back to the […]
Viewed July 18, 2006
So, like, I was totally going to avoid watching the “Pink Five” series, because what little I had seen of it was, like, so stupid but then, I, like, thought that maybe I’d better watch them because they’re, like, really well known and people would wonder why I hadn’t seen them and […]
Viewed July 1, 2006
When Brian Henson and Co. revived the Muppet film franchise with 1992’s Muppet Christmas Carol, there was something missing. This continued with the followup, Muppet Treasure Island (1996). A big factor, of course, was the lack of Muppet creator Jim Henson, who passed away in 1990. But perhaps as […]
Viewed June 27, 2006
I put Superman Returns at a big disadvantage before I saw it. I watched Richard Donner’s 1978 film Superman right before going to the theater. Now, normally I wouldn’t place that kind of pressure on a film. I didn’t watch any of the 90s ‘Batman’ movies before seeing Batman […]
Viewed June 16, 2006
Morons from Outer Space is a rather ambitious undertaking from the British film industry at a time when it was in a bit of a decline. It is, obviously, a sci-fi comedy and the writers, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, come up with some decent bits of humor and the […]
Viewed June 3, 2006
With the release of Pixar Animation Studio’s new film Cars mere days away, I decided (in addition to re-watching all my favorite Pixar stuff) to try and track down all the Pixar material that I had not yet seen and watch it before going to the new film. Turned out there […]
Viewed May 26, 2006
G.I. Joe: Ninja Battles is little more than a promotional film for the G.I. Joe line and the commercial DVD release G.I. Joe: Valor vs. Venom (2004). It’s “animation” is limited to mildly animated still drawings and occasional clips either lifted from Valor vs. Venom or done during that production. […]
Viewed May 24, 2006
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is everything I expected it to be: a decent enough action flick with little in the way of originality. Basically, T3 tells a very similar story to T2: two robots sent to the past; one to kill, one to protect. Throughout the course of […]
Viewed May 18, 2006
I came across The Wesley’s Mysterious File at a local record store and it looked interesting enough that I picked it up. It led me to buy a bunch of Asian films, several of which I have already covered. But I never actually watched the film. Sadly, although it […]
Viewed May 14, 2006
I only decided to watch Timeline because I had recently finished listening to the book on tape and was interested in how they would adapt it. Unfortunately, they did everything one expects from Hollywood, and that’s not a good thing.
The story revolves around a group of archaeologists who get sucked into […]
Viewed May 8, 2006
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is one of the better videogame-to-film adaptations, but given the genre’s history, that’s not that great an accomplishment.
The story is typical of the loopy ones seen in the ‘Tomb Raider’ games, revolving around ancient magics with just a hint of archaeology. (Tomb Raider’s obvious aping of […]
Viewed April 30, 2006
Okay, so this is the first time we kind of bend the rules a little bit. I’d been wanting to watch a fanfilm or two as part of this project, but I found them all to be so trite as to not be worth the time. There certainly didn’t seem […]
Viewed April 16, 2006
A Trip to the Moon is the oldest movie I have seen so far this year. Made near the dawn of cinema, it is a breakthrough film, utilizing special effects in a way not before seen.
The plot is very simple: scientists decide to built a rocket to visit the […]
Viewed April 9, 2006
Jurassic Park III is the first of the Jurassic Park series to not be directed by Steven Spielberg, the first not to be based on a novel by Michael Crichton, the first not to feature original music by John Williams and the first not to feature Ian Malcolm. Now, not having […]
Viewed March 23, 2006
By now, I should be used to M. Night Shyamalan’s peculiar ability to create a realistic and convincing world for his stories to illuminate, yet I was still surprised by Signs. I was completely taken in by the trailers and advertisements that seemed to indicate that Signs is a mystery, following […]
Viewed March 3, 2006
At the time that Chicken Little was made and originally released, it seemed unlikely that Disney and Pixar would be working together ever again and Disney needed to show they could at least compete in the arena of CGI films. Since then, of course, Disney has agreed to buy Pixar, but […]