Weekly Movie Roundup

I watched 7 movies last week:

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country To Leslie The Mirror Crack'd
  • Somehow, I’d managed to never see the entirety of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country until now. I don’t know that it’s a perfect movie, or even the best of the original Trek films, but it is one of the better ones, and moreover a really fitting farewell to the cast.
    • I’m not sure that To Leslie has anything truly original to say about addiction or hitting rock bottom, but it’s helped enormously by some really good performances, including a remarkable turn by star Andrea Riseborough.
      • If you’ve always wanted to see Angela Lansbury portray Agatha Christie’s famous sleuth Miss Marple…well, I’m sorry to report that The Mirror Crack’d is going to be your only option. That’s not the fault of Lansbury, who’s clearly having fun with the small handful of scenes she’s actually in, or of the rest of the cast, which includes heavy hitters like Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Kim Novak, and Tony Curtis. The movie is not without some charms, but it’s slow and not especially engaging—which is all the more surprising, given director Guy Hamilton’s track record.
      Fast Company Scarecrows The Presidio
      • The most interesting thing about Fast Company is that it’s the movie David Cronenberg made between Rabid and The Brood. It feels like such a weird B-movie blip in his early career, but also not a work-for-hire; Cronenberg co-wrote the script and was reportedly just a huge fan of drag racing. His enthusiasm for it isn’t exactly infectious, but the movie is passably entertaining for what it is.
        • Scarecrows isn’t perfect—the limitations of its effects (and some of its acting) are occasionally on full display, and it maybe could have done with a little more explanation of the story—but it’s better than average, which is a lot better than I expected. It takes a pretty simple premise and tosses it up against another one, and it generates some pretty solid scares from that.
          • Roger Ebert called The Presidio “a film assembled out of spare parts from other movies, out at the cinematic junkyard.” And for a short while, it’s tempting to think he was being too harsh. Peter Hyams is a talented, if workmanlike director, and there are reliable actors in the cast. But the movie and its plot are incredibly generic and don’t ever rise above that, relying instead on unconvincing plot twists and even less convincing character development.
          Medicine for Melancholy
          • Medicine for Melancholy lacks a little of the polish and focus that director Barry Jenkins would later bring to Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk—but only a little of it.

          I also re-watched Poltergeist, which I don’t think I’ve seen in some thirty years. It holds up really well, despite being a very 1980s horror movie.