Gray’s Anatomy. Steven Soderbergh. 1996. ⚄

Well…

I was somewhat sceptical. I mean, everybody loves Sex, Lies and Soderbergh, but has he done any movies after that (his first) that’s any good?

On the other hand, this is Spalding Gray, who’s fun.

So I was hoping this would just be Gray on a stage with a static camera, and… this isn’t that. It’s the most spruced-up stage thing ever.

I’m also having a lot of difficulty connecting to his story, because he’s talking about all these weird cures for his eye thing. I have the same thing, and my eye doctor told me what it was, and that it might fix itself. And then the next time I visited him, he told me that it’d fixed itself.

That’s less drama.

I didn’t even visit a single Christian Science person, or any sweat lodges, or any nutritionists, or any psychic surgeons.

I’m not trying to say that my complacent passivity is any good or anything, but… It’s like…

Americans are weird?

But his eye anecdotes are funny, and mine aren’t. So he wins.

Star Trek Beyond. Justin Lin. 2016. ⚄

I’ve seen this before, but on DVD (I think). Now it’s 4K, so it’s… more…

More.

Oh, this isn’t by JJ Abrams? WILL THERE BE NO HORIZONTAL LENS FLARES?!?!

[half an hour passes]

This started off fun, but then there was fifteen minutes of character development and stuff (zzz), and then…

SO MUCH ACTION

I wonder about the economics of Kraal having a million space ships (I mean, they all presumably have to have a shower and a toilet and a kitchen and stuff) instead of a lesser number of bigger ships, but those swarms sure look cool.

[more time passes]

I’m really enjoying this. It’s a good old-fashioned action slash adventure thing with scrappy girls and guys fighting against the odds. It’s not exactly a Trek movie? But it’s a lot of fun.

I see that the director has done a bunch of Fast & Furious movies, so now I want to see whether those are good, too. I had assumed that they were eh not?

[and now it’s over]

I wondered why there hadn’t been any further Trek movies — this one was so much fun. But it was a very, very expensive movie to make (and it shows), and… well, I don’t know how much money this netted the studio, but I’m guessing it was a wash? The previous Trek movie grossed $470M (which sounds profitable at this budget), but $350M sounds dodgy.

But at least we have TV… with the disappointing Discovery series, and the execrable Picard series. Perhaps the new Pike series will be good.

Star Trek Into Darkness. J.J. Abrams. 2013. ⚄

How odd! This shifts between 16:9 (outside the ship) and … 16:7? I’m eyeballing… on the ship. Oh, it’s 2.4:1, which is like 16:6.6…? Whatevs.

I’ve seen this before, but on DVD, so I’ve barely seen 10% of it. I mean, bitrate wise; this is 4K.

I remember people really hating this when it came out, and I watched it, and I loved it. Perhaps I won’t still be a fan? Perhaps I will? Excitement!

[an hour passes]

Wow. This is like the Platonic ideal of a Star Trek movie. It’s everything I love about Star Trek (a group of people who trust each other and are striving towards a greater goal), but with more action and fun. You still get the discussions about ethics, but there’s so much fun stuff going on.

Oh why did Abrams defect to the more boring Star Wars universe? That’s a universe that’s basically Wagon Trail In Space and isn’t very interesting.

And why didn’t the people who made Picard look at this instead of getting all their impulses from Battlestar Galactica? BSG was brilliant in 2004, but it’s so played out and tired now.

The only thing that’s even remotely annoying here is the way that Abrams keeps shifting focus. I mean, it looks cool, but after a couple of times, it’s enough.

[half an hour more passes]

OK, this may be the best Trek thing ever, and I could watch this forever, but it’s not a perfect movie. It’s pretty flabby in the middle, with a lot of exposition that doesn’t really seem necessary.