Quick Reaction: His Girl Friday

I'd be a fool not to enjoy Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell talk circles around people for 90 minutes. This is a simple movie that's hard to recap. Grant is Russell's ex-husband and decides he wants her back. The movie takes place over a single day. It excels at building on recurring or escalating jokes throughout. It's very much in the tradition of screwball comedies. I haven't seen all the adaptations of The Front Page that are out there, but this is a good one. It's also very easy to see how this started as a play.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend 

Delayed Reaction: Star Trek: First Contact

The Pitch: Well, the last time we let an actor in a supporting role direct a Star Trek movie that included time travel, it did really well.

The crew of the Enterprise attempts to stop a Borg assimilation of Earth by traveling back in time to when the first man from Earth went to warp speed.

This is another one of those movies I've seen a couple times but not at all recently. One of the weird things about getting older is when I can say "I haven't seen that movie in two decades" and mean it. It's probably more like 15 years for this one, but my point stands. I don't remember it well.

It's kind of fun how after the inert austerity of the first Star Trek movie, all the movies until the 2009 reboot really run with the aesthetic "a TV show episode", albeit longer and more expensive, of course. I have to believe that was a stylistic choice and not a limitation. Their sweet spot was when the budgets were small enough that the studio left them alone. They weren't going to recast the crews, and most of those actors weren't movie stars (especially in that era). It's ironic that they rebooted the franchise as a tent-pole Hollywood movie (2009) right as the media landscape was catching up to the way Star Trek used to do things. TV and movies are far more intertwined now. Actors freely move between either platform. It wouldn't be as odd to see casts do what Star Trek did for 10 movies. All that said, Star Trek is an anomaly that has no comparison.

First Contact is a fun hit of TNG without the risk of committing to a multi-season rewatch of the series. That was enough to get it out of my system. The effects are a little dated. HD has made the makeup a little more distracting. Certain elements play a little cheesier, simply because this is made with the rules of a TV show.

Here's the thing though. I love that cast. Patrick Stewart isn't at all out of place on the big screen. Bringing in Alfre Woodard and James Cromwell help to up the prestige of it. The Borg are a fantastic enemy. This is Star Trek putting its best foot forward in nearly every way. While Generations is technically the first movie with the Next Generation cast, First Contact is really their first unassisted showing and it's the best case scenario. I have no memory of Insurrection* and poor memories of Nemesis.

*OK. I have one Insurrection memory. In the middle of the Enterprise crashing, when I saw it, the fire alarm started going off in the theater, creating one of the most visceral movie-going experiences I can remember.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend

Delayed Reaction: Apollo 11

The Pitch: So, they filmed a bunch of really nice footage for the Apollo 11 mission, then didn't bother to use a lot of it.

A documentary using actual footage from Apollo 11 to tell the story of going to the moon and back.

With the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing this year, I'm getting some space overload. I rewatched The Right Stuff recently. I watched HBO's From the Earth to the Moon when they made that available. First Man was less than a year ago. Apollo 11 is sort of the closing act before my space interest goes on hiatus*. Watching it at home, I immediately regretted not seeing it in theaters on a big screen.

*That's probably a lie. I'm already thinking things like "Maybe I need to reconsider Interstellar" and I'm certain to rewatch The Martian for the umpteenth time before long.

The footage they found for this is incredible. It captures the overwhelming size of everything involved. The opening shot is them moving the space shuttle into position and I almost couldn't believe how big everything looked. I'm so used to seeing the distant shot of the shuttle or the extreme close up. I never get a sense of perspective like this. The more I learn about the Apollo missions, the more amazed I am that they succeeded in their mission. Just as important though is all the footage of the people. I love when proper film is used for documentary film footage. It makes everything come alive and feel real. I wasn't alive during the Moon Landing. I know logically that everything then was just as real as everything is now. But I rarely see footage that makes it look real, and not like a memory. This documentary grounds everything and makes it tactile.

After the shuttle launch, the movie does have trouble maintaining its momentum. The footage understandably isn't as good. The actual mission is pretty dull. It's still good, but it's not as good.

The lack of narration is a smart move. It makes everything come alive more. However, that does make the movie a little harder to follow if you aren't already familiar with some of the specifics of the mission.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend