The Internet can be a fairly good guide to which TV episodes of the Star Trek franchise are the worthiest to watch.  Some that have been touted by web contributors I’ve seen on DVD and was glad I did.

Star Trek: Voyager‘s “The Omega Directive” (Season 4), for example, held up well on a second viewing and not just a first.  Here, the starship’s crew are very much in the laboratory, with Captain Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) working to destroy a particular molecule and the female Borg character (Jeri Ryan) working to stabilize it.  The latter is making an error, desiring that the dangerous particle stay intact since it represents Perfection for her.  In fact it seemingly represents a spiritual experience for a nonbelieving alien.  Although limited in drama, the episode is not at all boring—and not at all stale either, but gleamingly fresh.

Another real fan-pleaser from Season 4 of Voyager is “Hope and Fear,” which presents duplicity and vengefulness in addition to hope and fear.  (Get this: the fear belongs to Ryan’s Borg.)  A phrase like “sophisticated fun” was invented for this episode.  It’s not quite as intelligent as “The Omega Directive,” but it’s just as engaging.  And better acted.

I’d like to write about a couple of other Voyager episodes in the future.  The Internet has inspired me.

Star Trek: Voyager (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The boneheaded Live Free or Die Hard (2007) glorifies the slacker computer geek, believes technological wizardry to be all-powerful, and proffers an indestructible bore of a hero who’s overprotective of his teenaged (?) daughter.  There’s domestic terrorism too.  Ho hum. . . It’s well-directed by Len Wiseman except for his allowing Kevin Smith to overact, but . . . ugh!

Cover of Live Free or Die Hard (Unrated Edition)

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013) is  simply a sequel looking for a reason to exist besides making money and not finding it.  Along with having a no-account plot, this animated flick is so kooky and nonsensical it’s dumb.

Yes, the animation is splendid, but why do these movies always have to contain scatological humor?  (Wedgie-proof underwear?)  But that’s what kids like, the studios would say.  True, but trendiness is trendiness.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2 (Photo credit: christianz1969)

On Flags Of Our Fathers (2006):

War and deception don’t go together.  I mean, war is horrifying enough without deception coming to pass.  Why, it’s so horrifying that your heroism nearly counts for nothing.

Here we have what Clint Eastwood’s movie about Americans at Iwo Jima is telling us, and the unsophisticated (though Republican) creator of 2004’s Million Dollar Baby again thinks he has made an important film.  In fact it’s worthless.  It’s tedious, often weakly acted, and its semi-pacifism over WWII is stupid.  Besides that, it gives way to the usual phony sensitivity, complete with guitar chords, of Eastwood’s oeuvre.

Cover via Amazon

It’s an expensive 2013 production, so naturally it’s the best-looking space movie I’ve seen.

The zero-gravity condition in various spacecraft spots in 2001: A Space Odyssey becomes dizzying zero-gravity spinning and ceaseless floating in Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.  The striking outer hardware of spaceships in 2001 becomes an ugly jumble of fascinating hardware, lengthy cables and all, in Gravity.  It’s certainly a technical improvement on Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film.  There is also a bit of Alien-style violence (a dead astronaut with a big hole in his face) and a shot of a space technician played by Sandra Bullock shedding her astro-suit a la Jane Fonda’s Barbarella (ugh), revealing a pair of shorts but without getting topless.  Thus Cuaron was influenced by several other sci-fi pics, yet Gravity is indeed its own movie, a singular achievement.

I don’t know why so much goes wrong for Sandra as she struggles in the heavens, but it’s quite a spectacle when it does.  And I saw the film in 2D, not 3D—surely even more enthralling.  There are terrifically vivid closeups of Bullock, and blunt, beguiling cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki.  Enjoy.

Weightlessness Tests (Photo credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives)