Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

I've lost track of where all the themes originally came from, but it's lovely to have some of the old music playing again. Also nice to have a little nod to the blue on black opening titles of the original movies.

Lovely to come from 4:3 720p-at-best tv Trek to these big expensive widescreen shots of the Enterprise! Especially when they seem to have taken notes from the shows (Voyager's titles in particular) to make space a little more colourful. Also just nice to get the extra detail in the interior shots, all the extra detail in Picard's face and so on. Somehow emphasises the two years of aging in the cast since the TNG finale, though!

Frakes' direction is energetic, and I like the textbook horror scene opening with the dream fake-out! Also, straight into the plot with 'the Borg are attacking'. Makes it all feel more vital and propulsive than, say, Generations, even though nothing has actually happened yet.

Tracee Lee Cocco is back as well! Hooray!

Nice to understand what the Defiant is now!

Also, wow, under 15 minutes and they've already got Worf back and travelled through time.

Nice to see there's still time for some good old fashioned fireballs and stunt people falling off buildings! Meat and potatoes film-making!

Frakes and his DoP really like strong lighting! Lots of light through grids and colour gels!

I was just getting excited to see Alyssa and then EMH showed up! Such a smart little moment to tie Voyager in after DS9 got a nod with the Defiant.

I like the continued horror sensibilities of keeping the Borg offscreen as well. All POV shots and shadows.

Smart use of the holodeck (and I like the weird little detail that Nicky The Nose has a seemingly anachronistic prostheses, like some weird little mistranslation by the computer) and also a cameo from the Neelix actor! I really like how this keeps on giving us little bits of fan service without feeling tacky. Also, Picard blowing away some Borg with a tommy gun is such a great image.

Ha, posted that just in time for Barclay to get his first, wordless appearance!

Oh, I guess I should talk about the Borg Queen. Honestly, I don't mind the Borg getting returned to boogeymen, they only got a couple of goes at it before all the Hugh stuff that neutered them and never really went anywhere. Plus the concept of the Queen doesn't bug me - it's a way for the Borg to manage and direct such a huge collective mind and they keep it ambiguous enough that it doesn't break the general concept. I guess an alternative might have been to have a known character (Alyssa?) get assimilated and speak on behalf of the Borg in much the way that Locutus or any of the random Borg voices we hear do, or just to keep them essentially unknowable zombies, which is harder to build an ensemble movie around.
I can see the arguments against the Borg Queen, but I do think it's a potentially interesting idea. I think I would rather they'd have developed the Borg this way in the show rather than going straight for the Hugh rebellion thing - making the Borg structure deeper and weirder than just 'a collective' while also never explaining it fully. I like the idea that they at least temporarily create 'counterparts' like Locutus or the Queen to aid in assimilating a new species and that this can cause weaknesses or unusual behaviour. Granted, though, they don't really get close to any of that here, she's really just a sexy evil robot.

I like seeing Picard pushed to his absolute limit here, then being brought back by literary allusions and visual metaphors.

Finished! Overall a very strong movie, basically just a really good TNG action story with everything ramped up and kept tight. Well, for the most part anyway - I think the only weak spot really is that the Earthbound crew basically have nothing to do except for deal with a brief wobble of Cochrane's. It's all still lots of fun but it doesn't quite mesh with the Enterprise stuff and it maybe even prevents the end confrontation with the Borg from being properly epic. Still very cool to see that moment of first contact though.

Rating: Very good

Old School (2003)

I thought this would be a mediocre 00s comedy, something fun to pass the time; it was surprisingly awful. The actors are all on auto-pilot, the comedy almost wholly comprises 'what if naked people', and the story is a complete mess. They only get to the central concept 30 minutes into an 86 minute story, a bunch of plotlines get resolved arbitrarily or completely forgotten about and the whole thing is hugely derivative.

Rating: dreadful

Supergirl (2026)

A really shallow, poorly-constructed movie. The action sequences are badly directed Gunn-lite, the narrative is a mess, the two adult leads and the villain all have the same 'drunkenly swaggering through all this like I don't care' energy which is really redundant and just makes everything feel even less meaningful. The child actor gives a very ropey performance (possibly scuppered by the terrible dialogue) and her character is the worst kind of 'whining all the time, constantly messing things up' irritating. The villain is boring. Lobo barely exists and Momoa's make-up/costume makes him looks ill-defined and bloated. There are lots of little logic bumps and they never handle the 'over-powered' issue well, it's just 'something affects her for a while so she loses her powers but then she gets them back and beats everyone up' over and over. Kara's moral stance on revenge and violence is confused and lacks any backstory justification. The needle drops are all perfunctory and bland.

The only bits I enjoyed or felt invested in were the origin flashback sequences that were dotted throughout. They should have led with those, building in a reason for Kara to be anti-vengeance, then made the rest of the movie her and Lobo escorting this girl on a revenge mission so they can act as the angel and devil on her shoulder trying to talk her in or out of it. Or made Lobo the villain (and also interesting).

Rating: bland, bad