I hadn't seen tonight's first movie Star Trek Into Darkness yet, some of the others had. The new BluRay looks pretty nice. The movie is a rehash of the Kahn story from the original series. I didn't know that going in. It's a bit disappointing, though for the most part I liked the movie. There's lots of whooshing about, fighting, stuff blowing up and a great villian in Benedict Cumberbatch. You might keep an eye out for his Sherlock series. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Sultana, John Cho, Anton Yelchin and Simon Pegg return as the main command crew. Bruce Greenwood guests as Christopher Pike, Peter Weller as the head of Star Fleet and Alice Eve as his daughter. Her real dad is Trevor Eve, who stars on the long running British tv show Waking The Dead. Leonard Nimoy pops in for a brief bit near the end. It's directed by JJ Abrams and written by three guys, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof, who work together a lot on medium to large budget sf and summer blockbuster type movies, sometimes with Abrams. I think their skills lean more to the technical than to story telling.
The story story opens with Spock trying to freeze a volcano on a world with a primitive people. The volcano will destroy the planet. Spock is lowered into the volcano and things go wrong. Spock's tether breaks and he's luckily landed on a bit of lava that's more solid than the rest. He has to start up the bomb and they can't beam him out of there because of a plot device. Kirk risks all, comes out of hiding, the natives see the ship, but they rescue Spock. When they get back Kirk looses the Enterprise because he broke so many regulations, including the Prime Directive. He created a cargo cult out of some primitive people when he showed them that the Enterprise can fly under water. While that's happening in space there's another sub-plot back on Earth. Benedict and a man with an incurably sick and dying daughter come to a deal. To save his daughter the man blows up a building that houses a secret Star Fleet project. When Kirk returns he gets a scolding and Admiral Pike gets the Enterprise. Kirk gets reduced to first officer under him and Spock is reassigned to another ship. After the bombing the Brass meet and are attacked by Benedict. Lot's of them die, including Pike and Spock's new captain. Kirk is given his job back and Peter sends him after Benedict, who is now on the Klingon home world. He had an amazing transport device that can teleport people from Earth to the Klingon home world. Wow, huh. They catch up to Benedict and he gives himself up. Peter shows up and it turns out he's set up the Enterprise to start a war with the Klingons. He believes it's coming and we might as well get on with it. Things don't go so well for Peter and San Francisco is partially destroyed when his ship crashes on it.
Mostly an okay movie, bit too serious at times and not hardly original. There are scenes in the movie that seem borrowed from other sf films. The production values are great, lots of interesting scenery and sets and spaceships. The script was better than some of the plot devices that it hung on. There was some nice humor, mostly with Simon Pegg, that helped lighten the tone. Not sure I would run out and buy the movie now that i have seen it but it might get cheap somewhere.
Greg brought a 3 park of Euro-sleeze and we watched The Sinful Dwarf. It's a 1973 Danish film with some English people speaking English. A young couple, hard on their luck, rents a cheap flat in a rundown building. The old lady who rents the rooms is a retired entertainer. The dwarf in the title is her son. They have some rooms to rent and a secret sex prison in the attic. They keep 3 naked female heroin addicts in the room and men come have sex with them for cash. The husband of the young couple is a writer who isn't working. No one wants his stuff and the couple are skint. Hubby takes a job in a toy shop that has a secret drugs business going on. It's where the woman who runs the sex prison gets her H. Stupidly the dwarf and his mom kidnap the wife while the husband is muling drugs from Paris. He thinks he's bringing toys back but once he overhears the dwarf and the shop owner talking he calls the coppers in for a bit of help. They raid the rooming house, find the sex prison and free the wife and the other women. It's sure not a well made movie, some parts are more watchable than others, and that's not just for the content. The dialog is pretty sad at times but the actors aren't that great so there you go. The sets are cheezy and the dwarf usually more comical than scarey. There's plenty of nudity and simulated sex. The girls were nice enough. Ann Sparrow plays the wife and it's her only film. I could see why. The box touts it up as being at the top of the sleaze game but it doesn't quite deliver the most depraved film ever. I've certainly seen worse and more repulsive not that I've seen that many sleaze films. They aren't a genre that I care for that much. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you might like to see what a sleaze film is like. As those things go, this is on the side of less horrible.
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