lol, awesome!
*adds to must-watch list*

Limitless is really good fun

I quite enjoyed it, although it was a little too easy to guess the major plot points.


Yep, really liked that one.

Just finished watching Source Code - enjoyed it - as said quite a few plot holes but then almost any film with Timetravel has that issue. Would give it a 3 1/2 out of 5 as I would have preferred ait to end when tey switch off his life support - rather than the more soppy ending - although I guess they did that to leave it open for a sequal

Star Trek (2009)

Prequels are always going to struggle within the bounds of a strictly canonised universe; unfortunately, despite all my hopes, ST is little different.

Let's start with what was good. The CGI, although a little overpowering in places, managed to stay out of the way just enough to be somewhere near believable. The ship designs were brilliant - subtly blending the need to look futuristic with the need to match the original series. Some of the sound cues, the various bleeps and whirrs, were like meeting old friends from a past life. And the score for the credits was superb.

And then the less good...

... It's all very well and good having the visuals looking all spangly but in a film like this, where you can pretty much guess the ending, the entire point of the film is about the journey. And the journey sucked.

Firstly, the plot - it was terrible. By the end the only singularity I cared about was the one sat right in the middle of the screenplay, relentlessly sucking life and hope out of the movie. Secondly, the pacing. "Ooo let's compress several seminal events in the lives of the crew into a few minutes". Why is McCoy called ‘Bones’? We find out in his second paragraph. Isn't he worth more than a single minute's plot development? There was ample room in the film to spend some time in the academy stage, letting the characters breathe a little bit. Instead the first thirty or so minutes is one machine-gun-speed race through the back story so we can get to the bangs.

Thirdly, they took arguably the best actor, Eric Bana, and made his role feel pale and irrelevant. They spent no time on him whatsoever so you have to remind yourself that he's the bad guy. I vacillated between rooting for the enemy and wondering who he was. Fourthly the film suffers from a serious lack of believability. I won't give any spoilers but, even laying aside the usual Trek-style wonky physics, suffice to say that sometimes they really do maul physical reality unnecessarily. Fifthly there's the inappropriate humour. Not knob gags but rather the use of Jar-Jar Binks humour in places where it just kills the tension. Sixthly, they denote action scenes not by subtlety of filming but by doing that Bourne-esque "let's just shake the camera about" trick.

The biggest horror, though, is the casting. Sulu is passable but Chekov is picked purely for his accent, Spock doesn't look Vulcan and Scotty comes across as a know-nothing twunt, Bones has no attitude and Uhura, a supposedly Swahili-American, is played by a hard-working but unfortunately Latino actress.

And then there's Kirk. James Tiberius Kirk. One of the all-time sexiest screen characters. A man so magnetic, so intense, charming and primal that a mere glance could make knickers drop at half a mile. Played by what looks like an extra from Dawson's Creek with all the gusto and panache of a large pie & chips.

They had a chance here to make a legendary film in a classic but beatable series. Instead, by the judicious application of stupidity, they managed to rip its heart out.

So sad.

Verdict: Watchable but a huge opportunity squandered.

5/10

I think I disagree with your assessment on almost every level.
I thought it was a terrific film, and I'm looking forward to the next. Spock's casting was superb!

I concur with this carbon based lifeform.

I thought that might happen.

It'd be boring if we all liked the same thing though.

I agree on the casting Spock was believable as well as Uhuru. They did skim over the character development and the whole time travel plot line was ridiculous and how they will now fit the other films in to the story line. Spock will not be able to do pon farr as he did he Star Trek 4 because Vulcan no longer exists.

I think I disagree with your assessment on almost every level.

Rusty summed up my thoughts on the film pretty well - better than I did at the time.

The back story was so rich, they could have done lots with it, but the first film wouldn't have had any epic space battles, which would have reduced its appeal to a certain part of the audience. But Kirk had so many adventures, Kobayashi Maru for example, they could have done so much to build up the back story and their early lives (spoiler) , without destroying the whole Rodenberry universe.

John Cho was believable as Sulu, but the rest not. Zoe Saldana bears not the slightest resemblance to Nichelle Nichols.

So, the quality of performance isn't as important as their resemblance to an actor from 50 years ago?
The point of the movie was to introduce an alternative time line - to reboot the franchise - so any comparison to the original series is somewhat pointless, to be honest.

er did you watch the film, they have effectively removed the whole series of films, they are no longer cannon but a what might have been. That time line no longer exists, there fore nothing that happened in the films ever happened or will happen.
As for Pon far it doesnt require Vulcan to exist (in this made up reality of course )

I thought it was Star Trek 3 and the planet was Genesis.

Star Trek 4 was the one with the whales, was it not?