In comments recently, reader Brian Malbon forwarded a theory that’s probably been expressed before, somewhere, but I’d never really thought about it, and I hope he’ll permit me to paraphrase: the best Star Trek movies are the ones that are least like Star Trek, but which use the Star Trek universe as a springboard to […]

When you’ve gone right there, and titled your movie Epic, you’ve pretty much written your own death warrant. The word “epic”, after all, connotes a certain gravity and scale that is almost certainly not going to be met by an animated family film. The word “epic”, as a title, is also staggeringly boring and nondescript; […]

When I sit down to watch Star Trek: Generations, there are three different people involved: the grown-up version of a young boy who watched the 1987-’94 TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation with awe-inspired, rapt attention bordering on worship; an adult who regards original 1966-’69 Star Trek to be, in all sobriety, one of […]

In this blog’s history, we have sometimes kicked around the question of what movie franchise has witnessed the steepest drop in quality between subsequent episodes, and in that spirit, I’d like to ask the inverse: what is the strongest increase from one film to the next in a series? Since this is a review of […]

The internet swears to me that I disliked Fast Five at the time; I don’t recall that, but far be it from me to call the internet a liar. So that being the case let us presume that Fast & Furious 6 really is the first totally satisfying film in the Franchise of a Thousand […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: though Epic might be the third-place finisher of the week’s new releases, it is first in the hearts of […]

We’ve finally arrived at The Fox and the Hound 2, and I can finally tell you all a story that will not make me look very intelligent or noble, but will maybe clear some things up, anyway. It’s come up more than once during this misbegotten slog through the direct-to-video Disney sequels that perhaps I […]

The Clown Murders of 1976 is not significant on account of being the first Canadian horror film, or even the first Canadian slasher film (at an absolute minimum, Black Christmas has it beat by two years, and even that wasn’t the first). It is, however, the first AND ONLY Canadian horror film to feature John […]

You know what I think is probably the single most galling thing about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier? It’s the only time in a dozen Star Trek movies where “to seek out new life, and new civilizations; to boldly go where no one has gone before” is an active, driving element of the plot. […]

I shall open with a claim that is non-standard, and probably a bit daft: I think that Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the film out of all 12 Star Trek features that comes closest to the spirit of the TV show it’s based on (okay, so Star Trek: Insurrection probably comes even closer, […]

You know what’s the absolute worst, is when a movie that has been doing rather well for itself suddenly makes just a little tiny shift, and you become fully aware that it’s heading in a direction that will not work out well for it. But unlike regular bad endings, where the film abruptly pukes out, […]

There used to be a rule, that maybe does not have so much currency with the younger folk, given that it was spectacularly broken in 2002, so I will restate it for those who are unfamiliar with it: Even-numbered Star Trek movies are good. Odd-numbered Star Trek movies are bad. What, exactly, that means depends […]