The Terminator (1984) Movie Review

The Terminator is a movie that I've never been interested in seeing. I'm not a big action movie guy and I'm not really a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact if I hadn't found the 1995 VHS release for a cheap price at a private geek sale, I wouldn't've bought it.

Growing up, movies like The Terminator were not ones that I was allowed to watch. Especially when I was a kid because they're R-rated and my parents rightfully decided that R-rated movies were not suitable for kids to be watching. In fact I didn't even see it during my stays in the hospital unlike Batman Returns, Super Mario Bros., and the few Disney movies that we didn't own on VHS when I was a kid. Even as a teenager I didn't have much interest in seeing the Terminator movies. They always seemed to be more style over substance and while they were technical pieces of art, they held no appeal for me.

Sitting down and watching the movie on VHS last night was a bizarre experience. Despite the movie being part of our collective consciousness, I didn't know a thing about the movie aside from the general plot of killer robot going back in time to kill the mother of Humanity's saviour and a soldier going back in time to protect her from said killer robot. I also knew two lines from the movie. "I'll be back", which is probably Arnold's most iconic line ever, and "Come with me if you want to live" spoken by Michael Biehn when he meets Linda Hamilton for the first time. That's about it.

It's a good movie, though the special effects don't hold up well after 36 years. There's just something missing. I'm not sure I can really articulate what's missing, only that there's something missing. The story is decent enough, and the character of Sarah Connor is iconic. But the movie feels rather emotionless with nothing for me to grab onto as cool or necessary. Like did we really need the scenes of Arnold killing the other Sarah Connor characters or Sarah's roommate, Ginger and her boyfriend Matt? I guess it shows that he is dangerous and can't be reasoned with, even though nobody from 1984 actually tries to reason with him, but it does nothing to further any of the characters. Like Sarah should be angry that Ginger is dead. Instead, it gets glossed over after Paul Winfield's character, Lieutenant Traxler, informs her of their deaths.

The cast is phenomenal in this movie. Aside from Arnold, Paul Winfield, Dick Miller, Bill Paxton, and Brian Thompson are the only actors I have any familiarity with. I've seen Arnold in Batman & Robin, Winfield in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Dick Miller in Small Soldiers, Bill Paxton in Thunderbirds (2004) and season 1 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Brian Thompson in a second season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where he plays a Klingon, and the pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But of I am completely unfamiliar with Linda Hamilton and Michael Biehn. They do a really good job of playing their characters, Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese, and I love the chemistry between the two of them.

As I mentioned before, the special effects do not hold up very well in 2020. Before I sat down to watch the movie I was warned that the special effects don't hold up, but I don't think I was prepared for just how much they don't hold up. They don't make the movie unwatchable, but they are pretty bad in comparison to other movies that came out in 1984 like Ghostbusters, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I've also heard that the effects in Terminator 2: Judgment Day are a lot better, but that's almost an unfair comparison to make because of course special effects are going to be better in 1991 than they were in 1984. That's a given.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Objectively The Terminator is an iconic movie that has a lot of cool scenes. Subjectively though, this movie isn't for me. It's good and I'll probably watch it again at some point, just because I enjoyed watching it despite my problems with it. It's never going to be my favourite movie of all time though and it didn't make me want to rush out and buy the second movie any time soon. I'm giving The Terminator 6/10 stars. The action was fine, but the movie felt emotionless to me and there just wasn't enough for me to really latch onto. I totally understand why people love the movie though and who knows, maybe one day I'll watch Terminator 2: Judgment Day and it'll make me appreciate this movie just a little bit more.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088247/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Star Trek: Picard (2020) Season 1 TV Show Review

Note: There will be some spoilers for the first season of Star Trek: Picard in this review as well as some minor spoilers for the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery. If you're not caught up on either show, you might want to do so before you read it.

I've been a Star Trek fan ever since I can remember. Star Trek: The Next Generation debuted when I was only nine months old, reruns of the original series have been on my entire life and I grew up with DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise. I read the books, played with the toys, watched original Trek, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager on VHS and DVD, and I got to visit the set of Next Generation when I was six years old. 1987-2005 was my era for Star Trek. Because of this the Kelvin timeline movies, the first two seasons of Star Trek: Discovery and the first season of Star Trek: Picard have been sources of conflicted feelings for me. Mainly because they aren't really Star Trek, and each has been a mixed bag, with both Discovery and Picard having episodes that I just didn't care for.

Then something strange happened to me yesterday afternoon while I awaited the season finale of Picard to come on. I went on StarTrek.com and watched the first episode of The Ready Room, the aftershow hosted by Wil Wheaton. In the episode there's an interview with the show's producers, Alex Kurtzman, Akiva Goldsman, and Michael Chabon, and in it they said something very interesting. They said they weren't interested in fan service. They wanted to tell a story. Now I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes at that statement because you probably feel that they're actually saying they don't respect Star Trek. Right? Here's the thing though. They are absolutely right. If Star Trek: Picard and even Star Trek: Discovery and the Kelvin timeline movies, were exactly the way classic Star Trek is then what would be the point? We could just watch the classic shows and movies again and save ourselves a lot of time. So when people say that the Kelvin timeline movies, Discovery and Picard aren't Star Trek, in a way they're right.

Star Trek has always been a progressive franchise. The movies starring the original cast from the '60s show are completely different from the original series, because they were made in the '70s and '80s instead of the '60s. Next Generation is completely different from the original show just like Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise are different from Next Generation. And that was done on purpose because if you just did the same thing each time, why bother making new shows or movies? Why tell new stories in that universe if you're just going to do the same thing again and again?

Star Trek: Picard season 1 has been a real roller coaster for me. While I felt that the F-bombs and the heavier violence were unnecessary and could've been toned down a little bit, since it's Star Trek, I enjoyed the overall story of the season. It feels like one ten hour movie split up into sections, and that's never really been done on Star Trek before. Both Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, and Discovery were all serialized, but you could watch an individual episode and not be completely lost. With Picard it was one continuous story and I really appreciated that. It was slow in the beginning, with them taking three episodes for Picard to get on the new ship, the La Sirena, and gather his new crew, who I will get around to talking about shortly, but the pacing is appropriate for the story they were telling and they gave me enough material that I was hooked even though it took forever to get onto the new ship.

It was difficult at the beginning to see Picard as a broken, old man. Especially since my grandfather was really sick at the time and passed away a week and a half after the series premiere of Picard aired. But to see him come out of that and get back to being the man he was when we last saw him at the end of Star Trek Nemesis in 2002 is what this show was about for the first season. It was also a redemption arc for Seven of Nine, who was wracked with guilt over the brutal murder of Icheb and, while I didn't appreciate them actually showing the brutal murder of Icheb on the show, seeing Seven grow for the first time ever was compelling and drew me into the show every time Jeri Ryan was on screen.

The show wasn't just about those two legacy characters though. It was also about Soji, the Android built by Dr. Bruce Maddox using Data's neural pathways learning to accept that while she isn't made of flesh and blood, she's as real as any organic being is, and then learning to maintain her Humanity despite her older sister's manipulation to wipe out all organic life in the universe. Her journey throughout this season has been one of the most compelling things about it for me. And to see her smash the beacon constucted by the Synths that would bring out the destruction of organic life was gratifying and worth waiting for. Isa Briones did such a fantastic job at playing Soji, as well as balancing the differences between Dahj, Soji and Sutra that they really felt like distinct characters. Which is harder to do in live action than it is in animation.

The rest of the cast is pretty great. I wasn't too sure about Raffi or Rios at first given they're rougher characters than we've had on Star Trek previously. But they grew on me as the season went on. Especially Raffi once she overcame her difficulties. Rios grew on me once we found out his tragic backstory and how it related to Soji and everything else going on in the season. So that was cool.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall the first season of Star Trek: Picard is pretty great and had an awesome ending. There are some rough spots in the season, mostly in episodes 5 and 6, and the constant use of F-bombs in dialogue, which I feel is completely unnecessary on a Star Trek series. But the story is compelling and the characters all develop in a way we've never seen in a Star Trek series before. And visually it is a gorgeous show. Like Discovery, Picard has a very cinematic look and feel to it that I love. I'm giving the first season of Star Trek: Picard an 8/10 stars simply because the harsher language does detract from the show slightly as it's in just about every episode of the season.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8806524/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

Planet Pop 2000 (1999) CD Overview

Planet Pop 2000 was the soundtrack of my life from November 1999 until probably January or February 2001. I was in middle school at the time and the CD came out probably in the summer of 1999 because the reverse side of the liner notes booklet is a calendar for the 1999/2000 school year, which started in September 1999 for me. I got the CD in November 1999. From 1999 until 2003, my grandmother used to take me out shopping for my birthday and for Christmas so that I could pick out what I wanted rather than provide her with a list and her trying to figure out exactly what it was that I wanted. Usually it was books. Specifically Star Trek or Star Wars books. Back then Chapters, a chain of bookstores, also sold CDs, audio cassette tapes, and VHS tapes in their stores (this stopped in the mid-2000's), and I happened to see this CD on a shelf as we were heading towards the cash to pay for the books I had picked out. I only picked out two books that day. One was the novelization of the pilot episode of Star Trek: Voyager, "Caretaker", and the other was the Voyager novel, Seven of Nine.

The songs on this CD are very 1998/1999/2000 in the way they sound. You couldn't get these songs at any other time in the '90s or the 2000s. That's how much they are of those three years. And they're all popular artists of the time too. You have Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys, Lyte Funkie Ones (LFO), Brandy, Sky, as well as many others. Most of them you don't hear from anymore. There is one artist on this album who is now more famous for the other thing that she did only six years after this album came out. Track 16 of Planet Pop 2000 is a song called "Girlfriend" and the artist is Billie Piper, who is well known for playing Rose, the Companion to the Ninth Doctor and the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who. She is just listed as Billie on the track listing on the back cover of the CD as well as inside the booklet, but she was a pop singer in the U.K. before she was cast on Doctor Who. Billie Piper probably wasn't well known outside of the U.K. though as I don't remember hearing "Girlfriend" on the radio, or any of her other songs. Though I'm sure this CD made Canadian kids aware of her because of "Girlfriend".

Like I said, Planet Pop 2000 was the soundtrack to my life for about a year or year and a half after I got the CD.  I listened to it with my younger brother and sister all the time and I also listened to it by myself as well. It was also popular with my classmates at school too. I was in grade seven at the time I got the album and this was the music that my classmates were listening to, even though some of them were starting to listen to the more hardcore rap that was becoming popular at the time. I remember there was this one day at school where there was a special event going on. I think it was the last day of school before the Christmas holidays. One of my classmates had brought the CD to school with her and our teacher let her pop it into the CD player and play it while we did whatever it is we were doing. Thinking back on it, it had to have been the last day before the Christmas holidays because I remember we had a classroom Christmas party in the afternoon and that was the only time we got to listen to music outside of music class, unless it was an indoor recess or something like that.

My favourite song on the CD is "Summer Girls" by LFO with "Girlfriend" by Billie Piper being my second favourite. I listened to "Summer Girls" so many times. I think I also taped it onto an audio cassette along with my favourite songs from other CDs we had in the house. Just because I could.

To this day I'll still pop the CD into the player and listen to it all the way through every once in a while or listen to the album on my iPod. Every time I do I think about the turn of the century when this CD was the soundtrack to my life and some of the people I went to school with at the time. And I always smile because these songs made me feel good, even if some of my classmates went out of their way to make my life hell at school, there were still a few that I was glad to see at school five days a week for eight months. Plus as a kid of the '90s and a teenager of the 2000s, these songs are the best musical representation of that period of 1999-2004 when these bands and musicians were at the height of popularity.

Cool World: The Official Comic Adaptation (1992) Comic Book Review

Cool World: The Official Comic Adaptation is almost indecipherable. I've never seen the movie that the comic is based on, but if I had to guess, I'd say it's probably as much of a mess as this comic is. The artwork is actually pretty good, but the story itself is pretty crappy.

The reason I have this comic is because I got it, along with the fourth issue of the Cool World mini-series, as gifts from the cast and crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I visited the set in January, 1993. I remember being in the ready room just off the Bridge set, and being presented the comics. There were a few Star Trek ones with this one as well, but I remember that my parents wouldn't let me read it as it's slightly more adult in content, though probably not as much as the movie itself is. Anyway, I got this comic in Los Angeles at Paramount Studios, on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation. So I thought that was pretty cool.

I don't have anything to say about the characters. They're one dimensional, and not especially interesting. Having never seen the movie, I don't know if they're more interesting there than they are here or not. I haven't heard a lot of good things about the movie, so maybe there isn't anything there and this comic is accurate to the movie in that way.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall Cool World: The Official Comic Adaptation isn't worth anyone's time. The artwork is decent but that's about it. The story is dumb, the characters are lame and there's no logic to the cartoon world in the comic. I'm giving this comic 1/10 stars just because the artwork is pretty great, even if the Human characters look weird.

Blog Update

Hey guys! How are all of you doing? I'm doing pretty well under the circumstances. I decided to do a weekly blog update for you to let you know what I'm doing on the blog as well as what's going on with me. Earlier today I put out my review of The Magician King by Lev Grossman. I hope you enjoyed that review because I enjoyed writing it. I also got my first VHS movie review out there on Sunday with Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. I loved going back and reliving my childhood with that tape. I spent the better part of Sunday going through all of my VHS tapes and rewinding the tapes that needed to be rewound and checking them out to make sure they work because that's going to be my source for movie reviews for the next little while. Some of the tapes I don't have much connection to because I didn't own them when I was a kid, but other tapes I own I do have a connection to. So that was a fun day.

As for other reviews that I've got planned for this week, I've got several that I'm going to do. Tomorrow I'll be reviewing another comic book from the remnants of my childhood collection. And that book is the comic book adaptation of 1992 animated/live action hybrid film, Cool World. I've never seen the movie before and I haven't actually read the comic before either. How I got it though was actually a special occasion, so I'll talk a little bit about that when I review the book tomorrow. I'm not going to have a review for you on Thursday, but Thursday is when the season 1 finale of Star Trek: Picard airs, so I'm going to do a season 1 review on Friday morning to get my thoughts out now that the season is finished. Finally, on Saturday I'm going to put out a review of The Terminator (1984). I've never seen this movie before and for my first viewing I'm going to be watching it on VHS so I'm looking forward to that. I'm hoping that the movie is just as good as everyone says it is and that I actually like it.

Aside from blog stuff, there's not a whole lot going on with me this week. I'm still in protective isolation so I'm at home doing my usual thing. Which honestly isn't that different from what I was doing before the Coronavirus hit us. The only real difference is that I can't have people over to hang out or go out with Brad or Katie. That's about it really.

Before I go I would like to mention something that I haven't talked about on the blogs before. Spoilers. Generally I don't like to give away very much in my reviews because I want you to experience these books, movies and comics for yourselves. But, for The Magicians and The Magician King I felt I had to give certain things away in order to talk about the characters. But I won't be doing spoilers in any of my other reviews except for some minor ones in my Star Trek: Picard review on Friday.

I think that's all I wanted to talk to you about today. I'll be back tomorrow with my review of Cool World: The Official Comic Book Adaptation. Take care.

The Magician King (2011) Book Review

In my review of The Magicians (2009) I said that it's better to read that book if you're reading the entire trilogy as this book and it's sequel The Magician's Land (2014) adds to and enhances The Magicians. However, I said that before I'd even finished The Magician King. And now that I have finished it, I actually have proof that The Magician King adds to and enhances The Magicians particularly when it comes to the character of Julia. Grossman does it in a way that not only enhances the previous book, but strengthens the overall story in this one. Which is something that not a lot of writers can do well. So it's not just useless background information that has no connection to the rest of the book.

While I liked the character of Julia in the previous book, she wasn't prominent in it because she didn't go to Brakebills with Quentin and because that book spent so much time focusing on Quentin, Julia just ended up disappearing, aside from a brief scene, until the very end of the book where she's this powerful goddess. In The Magician King though, Julia really does become the dual protagonist along with Quentin. And her journey to becoming a magician is honestly much more exciting and more true to how a person's journey towards anything actually is in the real world. Yes, Quentin has lost people, and has sacrificed a lot, but his sacrifices are more fantastical and fictional throughout the first book. With Julia though her struggle is more relatable in a way as sometimes we have to leave people behind in order to become the best versions of ourselves. Particularly when those people are toxic in our lives. It's not until the end of the book when her and her group of Hedge Witches start performing their ceremony to summon Our Lady Underground that her sacrifices become more fantastical in nature.

That entire scene where Julia and the Murs group attempt to summon Our Lady Underground, but get Reynard the Fox, a Trickster God, instead is probably one of the most horrifying scenes in the book. And while it's more descriptive being words on the pages of a book, that moment Julia realizes what's going on is a vital turning point in the series overall. Especially because she realizes it too late and most of her friends are killed while she is assaulted by Reynard. But before that, it was more like struggles of every day life even though she was in search of magic, something that doesn't actually exist in the real world. Grossman did such a great job writing those scenes.

Of course, Janet is the one who disappears in this book. Eliot does too for a while when Quentin and Julia are on Earth, looking for a way back to Fillory since the Neitherlands are messed up at this point. But in a way that's okay because they aren't main characters in the books the way Eliot and Margo are in the TV series. They're supporting characters to Quentin and Julia and that's it.

Speaking of Quentin, this book still doesn't make him all that interesting of a character. Not just in comparison to Julia, who has become my favourite character in the books, but to any other character that I've read about in other books. There's just something super ordinary about him and it kind of clashes with the fantastical elements in the series. Don't get me wrong, Quentin is a very good character, it's just he's not as interesting as some of the other characters in the books. It's almost like Grossman stagnated Quentin in the last book so that something awesome will happen with him in the next one. Hopefully that's true.

The Magician King is very much the second act of a three act story. It's dark, it's gripping and the ending is sort of depressing. Like The Empire Strikes Back (1980) The Magician King ends with everything having gone to hell. They saved magic, which the Old Gods were going to take away thanks to Julia and the Murs people having summoned Reynard previously as apparently nobody had summoned the Old Gods in over 2000 years, but Quentin was banished from Fillory as he'd assumed the burden of what Julia had done, due to the fact that she did it because Quentin didn't succeed in getting her into Brakebills in the last book. So because of that, the sacrifice Quentin had to make was giving up being a King of Fillory and going back to Earth.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall The Magician King is an excellent sequel to The Magicians. It doesn't feel forced or unnecessary, which many sequels can feel like. A lot of the problems that I had with the first book were fixed with this one. There's still not a ton of dialogue, but there's a lot more in this book than there was in the last one. I do still have an issue with Quentin being the main character just because he's not quite as interesting as the other characters. But, like I said, maybe the third book will justify him being the main character of the series. I'm going to give The Magician King 9.7/10 stars since the problems I had with The Magicians were mostly fixed here, but Quentin is still posing a problem as the protagonist of the series.

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) Movie Review

Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is probably my favourite Winnie the Pooh featurette out of the four from the '60s, '70s, and the '80s. It introduced both Piglet and Tigger, who are my two favourite characters in the entire Winnie the Pooh franchise. The animation itself is also pretty awesome for 1968. Then again I love Disney animation from every era, even when the movie it's part of isn't one of my favourites.

Along with Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree and later, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is something I watched all the time on VHS when I was a kid. In fact I probably watched it the most out of all three of the Winnie the Pooh films. In case you've never seen it, a windstorm blows through the Hundred Acre Wood and Gopher explains to Pooh that it's Windsday (a play on Wednesday) and during Pooh and Piglet's visit to Owl, Owl's house is blown over by the wind and destroyed. Eeyore then takes it upon himself to find Owl a new house. That night Pooh hears a strange noise coming from outside his house and meets Tigger. After Tigger leaves, the blustery day becomes a rainstorm that floods the entire Hundred Acre Wood, sending Pooh floating in an empty honey pot and Piglet floating on a chair. Once they get to Christopher Robin's house the flood is done and Eeyore finds a new house for Owl. Except it's Piglet's house, but Piglet gives the house to Owl and moves in with Pooh Bear.

Like I said, I watched this movie all the time when I was a kid. Sometimes I would watch it five or six times a day. I absolutely loved it. And I still love it today. I mean I've watched it recently as it's part of the feature film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, but to watch it on it's own again all these years later was an awesome experience. I remember one day I watched it while I was eating lunch at home. I was still eating baby food at the time. I don't remember what I had that day, but it might've been chicken or something like. Anyway regardless, I watched it during lunch, and even during breakfast sometimes. Yes, I watched it that much.

Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall I love this movie. Objectively I don't think it's as good as Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Subjectively though I absolutely love it. If you haven't seen it before, I would highly recommend tracking down a VHS copy of it and a VCR, and watching it. Though if you can't find a VHS copy, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is on the DVD for Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin as a bonus feature. I'm giving Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day 10/10 stars.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063819/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1