Star Trek: Generations (1994) – Some parts of this movie were filmed concurrent with the series finale, “All Good Things…” When the finale wrapped, the cast had a ten-day break before they were back to work on the feature. I’m sure that contributed to it feeling like an extra two-parter from the seventh season.
And that’s really the main complaint here: There is almost nothing here that couldn’t have been dealt with as a regular episode of the series. On the accidental death of Picard’s brother and nephew, he starts to re-evaluate his life choices and recognize his mortality; those are themes we’re seen several times, both in relationship to his brother and nephew and as part and parcel with each of his “tragic love” stories. There’s also Data’s emotion chip (a loose thread from the series) and the trouble-making Klingon sisters Lursa and B’Etor (recurring series characters, so they DEFINITELY made it seem like a two-parter). And the main crux of the story, of an obsessed character willing to hurt countless others in order to harness the power of an ill-defined space phenomenon… shucks, the only thing surprising about that is that he wasn’t an admiral.
Only two story elements were “bigger than series” here:
- William Shatner as Captain Kirk… and given that DeForest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy and Jimmy Doohan had all reprised their Original Series characters on TNG, this wasn’t so much of a qualitative difference as “now we can afford him!”; and
- Crashing and destroying the Enterprise… except that Star Trek III had already done that once, and this movie’s destruction didn’t fill as good a story reason (that’s right, Star Trek III actually did it better); it was pretty much here ONLY to shows us something that they couldn’t show us in the series.
(Easter egg for me: I recognized cult actor Brian Thompson as the Klingon helmsman — I think he has three lines from the background — merely by the distinctive shape of his mouth.)
Heaven Can Wait (1978) – If memory serves, waaay back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and VCRs were just becoming a thing, my grandparents had reserved a rental VCR and Star Wars for our very first video viewing. But one of the employees at the rental store accidentally rented Star Wars to someone else, so this movie was the first one I actually saw as a VHS rental. Thrilling story, huh?
So Warren Beatty stars as a football quarterback on the verge of a comeback who gets killed in a bicycle/automobile accident… Except he shouldn’t have died. His inexperienced “escort” (angel) yanked his spirit from his body right before the crash to spare him the pain, but since he wouldn’t have died, he can’t go on to his Final Destination, but his body has been expeditiously cremated, so the angels (headed by James Mason) finds him a new body, that of a multimillionaire who was just poisoned by his wife and his personal secretary.
It’s an innocuous little movie, with a gentle sense of humor and a romantic current. A classic? I dunno; maybe the presence of James Mason pushes it over that line.
The World of Drunken Master (1979) – There is something of a plot — two old masters of drunken kung fu reminisce how thirty years ago they both ended up working for a vintner to pay off their theft, and how they learned drunken kung fu from the manager and both fell in love with the same girl — but it’s really just an excuse for people to beat on people and get beaten in return. I watched this in the depths of my caffeine withdrawal, when I had just enough brainpower to follow the thin story.
Abandoned movies:
Never Cry Werewolf (2008) – “Hey, let’s make another version of Fright Night, but with a werewolf next door instead of a vampire! Also, let’s make this look as ‘filmed in Canada’ as we possibly can, and also let’s have the screenplay be disappointing!”
Brain Dead (1989) – It looks like it has all the right parts — a screenplay co-written by Charles Beaumont, starring roles for Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton — but something in the direction seems off; I think it was trying for a mix of “ominous” and “off-kilter,” but I just found it leaden.