Oscar Film Journal: JFK (1991)

Welcome to an unusual entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

Today's subject is honestly a difficult one to review, as I have wildly disparate opinions of it simultaneously.  It is a film to be judged on two separate fronts - as a piece of filmmaking craft, and as a docudrama that had a major impact on the national dialogue surrounding its subject.  I would be fully justified in giving this film the Awesomely Shitty Movies treatment as well (and I just may at some point).

The film is 1991's JFK, directed by Oliver Stone, based on two (purportedly) non-fiction books about the Kennedy assassination.  Stone's film chronicles the infamous investigation into and subsequent trial of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw, accused by the city's District Attorney Jim Garrison of conspiring to murder President Kennedy.  Starring Kevin Costner as Garrison and featuring a veritable who's-who of notable Hollywood stars, JFK spends over three hours taking us through Garrison's chaotic investigation, his interviews with various "witnesses" and informants, and finally the trial itself, which ended in abject embarrassment for the unscrupulous DA.  

I first watched this film in high school, going into it with very little prior knowledge of the JFK assassination.  I was transfixed by it on the first viewing, and in my college years it became one of my very favorite films.  I took Stone and his collaborators at their word as far as the facts of the case went, and it wasn't until my mid-twenties that I actually dug into the specifics of what happened on that fateful November day in 1963 and the aftermath.

But before we discuss the film's historical accuracy (or complete lack thereof), first let's talk about JFK as an exercise in cinema.  

There is no doubt whatsoever that Oliver Stone is an eminently talented filmmaker and storyteller.  Even without JFK on his resumé, he'd have proven himself one of Hollywood's most exciting directors of the 80s and 90s with titles like Platoon, Natural Born Killers, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors (another very entertaining but highly inaccurate biopic), Talk Radio and Wall Street.

Top Ten Things: Christopher Nolan Films, RANKED

Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!

It's another bonus edition of TTT, as we have not ten but thirteen entries to discuss - time to rank Christopher Nolan's filmography!  I've been a Nolan fan since Memento's 2001 theatrical release, and over the past two-plus decades this cerebral English director has already compiled an extraordinary body of work, creating a singular brand of intelligent, crowd-pleasing blockbuster films.  Nolan's affinity for challenging, puzzle-like movies was apparent from the beginning, but he also reinvented the Batman franchise by grounding it in reality and making its protagonist a deeply flawed, real-world hero trying to redeem his broken city.  Nolan's films generally demand repeat viewings, keeping the viewer on their toes and often letting the editing drive the narrative so there's no cinematic fat on the bone.  Every new Christopher Nolan film is event viewing for me, guaranteed to present a story in a genre-defying way audiences have never seen before.

Here now are Christopher Nolan's films, ranked....

13. Following

Nolan's feature debut was this neo-noir with a non-linear narrative, about an aspiring writer who looks for inspiration by shadowing people he sees on the street.  He falls in with an experienced burglar and begins to make a habit of breaking into strangers' homes, stealing various items, and selling what he can.  Soon though he becomes romantically involved with one of his "victims," whom he learns is mixed up with a local mobster.  Meanwhile nothing he comes to believe about her or his mentor is what it seems.  Following was made for a paltry $6,000 and is thus quite rough around the edges, but already Christopher Nolan showed his gift for labyrinthine storylines and devilish plot twists, two things he'd execute much more assuredly in his second film, Memento.

12. Tenet

Perhaps Nolan's most Nolan-est film was this 2020 puzzle box loaded to the brim with so much exposition he himself seemed to have trouble conveying it all.  John David Washington stars as The Protagonist, a CIA agent tasked with stopping a time-inverting terrorist plot that will create backward-traveling entropy and unmake the world as we know it.  Got all that?  Nolan as usual stacks the film with talented, capable actors and creates some truly unique set pieces, such as staging a fistfight while one participant is traveling forward through time and the other is traveling backward.  And while Tenet provides an entertaining, James Bond-on-conceptual-steroids cinematic experience, sadly some of the plot details get lost in the translation (not helped by the audio mix, which buries crucial dialogue under thundering sound effects).  Still Tenet is yet another innovative spy thriller from a director who loves his puzzles.

11. Insomnia

Nolan's remake of the 1997 Swedish thriller of the same title, Insomnia stars Al Pacino as an aging LAPD detective assigned to a murder investigation in Alaska during the "midnight sun" season.  The Pacino character accidentally kills his partner during a shootout, after said partner has revealed he intends to testify against Pacino in an Internal Affairs case.  Complicating the matter is the at-large murderer (a superbly creepy Robin Williams), who witnessed the shooting and attempts to blackmail Pacino into pinning the murder on the victim's abusive boyfriend.  What follows is a fascinating moral dilemma, where the flawed protagonist must choose between saving himself or bringing a killer to justice.  Insomnia takes the suspense thriller genre and turns it upside down, throwing curve balls at the audience every step of the way.  Pacino and Williams have splendid chemistry together, and Nolan's direction lends this noirish thriller a modern edge.

10. Dunkirk

Nolan's streamlined, visceral account of this World War II rescue tells the story from three different points of view: the air, the sea, and the land.  The film intercuts between the three locales, expanding time in some instances and showing us some of the same events from multiple points of view.  There's little historical context presented, so the material depicted must speak for itself and create an immersive viewing experience.  For the most part this element works, though I would've liked to see more about who these characters were and what the battle itself meant in the grand scheme of WWII.  You'll need to do a little homework to fully appreciate what's happening.  Still Nolan and co. deftly handle the genre, presenting a gritty, palpably harrowing war film and adding yet another impressive entry to his resumé.

Movie Review: The Odyssey (2026)

With his new film The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan has once again proven himself one of very few still-active film directors whose name alone is a box office attraction.  As with his clinically dialogue-driven historical piece Oppenheimer, a three-hour adaptation of an ancient Greek poem few moviegoers have read feels like a very hard sell in 2026.  But in the hands of Mr. Nolan it becomes a wildly successful cinematic sensation about the power of storytelling and the resiliency of the human spirit.  

Starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, and a slew of other recognizable names, The Odyssey chronicles the homeward journey of King Odysseus of Ithaca (Damon, in an unconventional but quite effective lead performance), after a twenty-year absence that included the Trojan War (the subject of Homer's other famous poem The Iliad).  Queen Penelope (a superbly expressive Hathaway) has spent two decades raising their son Telemachus (Holland) while also fending off dozens of male suitors looking to assume the throne, among them the slimy, treacherous Antinous (Pattinson is extremely punchable in this role).  The suitors mooch off the queen's generosity and bully Telemachus, hoping to lure him into a fight so they can be rid of him.  Meanwhile Telemachus hopes to confirm whether or not his father is still alive, and assume the throne himself if Odysseus is indeed dead.  

Oscar Film Journal: The Fugitive (1993)

Welcome to yet another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

Today I'm revisiting a film I've seen numerous times, one that's oddly grown on me leaps and bounds since I first saw it in the theater in 1993.  

The Fugitive, directed by Andrew Davis and starring Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones, is of course based on the 1960s TV series of the same name, itself inspired by true events involving a physician wrongly convicted of murdering his wife.  Dr. Richard Kimble (Ford, in a criminally underrated performance) comes home one night to find his wife bludgeoned to death and the one-armed man responsible still in the house.  The assailant escapes, leaving no trace, not even a forced entry at the door, and all remaining signs point to Kimble as the murderer.  Sentenced to death, Kimble nonetheless escapes police custody during a bus/train accident, and goes on the lam to prove his innocence, pursued relentlessly by a crack team of US Marshals.  

Awesomely Shitty Movies: The Patriot

Hello and welcome to another edition of Awesomely Shitty Movies at Enuffa.com, where I analyze and interpret a piece of cinematic art/product and try to decide whether it's awesome or shitty.

This week I thought I'd revisit the 2000 Mel Gibson historical epic The Patriot, directed by Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day fame) and co-starring the late Heath Ledger.

The Patriot tells the story of Benjamin Martin, a widower and veteran of the French-Indian War who has retired to his home in Charleston, SC with his seven children.  As tensions mount between the American colonies and Great Britain, Martin is called upon to vote on the formation of a Continental Army.  He refuses to support such a measure, fearing no good will come of a war with England, but the Army is approved regardless, and his eldest son Gabriel enlists.  From there the Revolutionary War escalates, and after the ruthless English Colonel Tavington (Jason Isaacs) kills Martin's son Thomas, Martin finds himself fully embroiled in the War and becomes one of the Americans' most skillful military leaders.  What follows is a dramatic, action-oriented historical piece covering Martin's exploits as a guerrilla fighter who vexes General Cornwallis (Tom Wilkinson) at every turn, while Colonel Tavington counters with particularly cruel tactics.

So what worked and what didn't?  Well let's take a look....


The Awesome

Mel Gibson

As always, Gibson turns in a compelling, dynamic performance, blending his proficiency as an action-hero with his more nuanced dramatic chops to create a convincingly human protagonist.  Despite being praised as a war hero, Martin has a much more realistic view of himself as a man who has done things for which he is ashamed, and who, as a single father, can no longer afford to be the idealist he once was.  This establishes a captivating friction, both between Martin and his superiors, and between Martin and Gabriel, who wants to contribute to the war effort despite his father's objections.  During the later parts of the film the evils of battle take their toll on Martin and he feels the loss of his own humanity.  Gibson conveys all this superbly and is completely believable in the role (Again, the man's a sick asshole in real life but I'll be damned if he wasn't one of the best actors out there for a while).

Oddly this is his mugshot from that 2004 DUI.

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Independence Day

Welcome to another Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com, where I overanalyze some big dumb slab of escapist entertainment to the point that you unfriend me on social media*.

*Please don't unfriend me, I'm so lonely....

Today's victim-- er, subject is the 1996 blockbuster event picture Independence Day, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman.

Independence Day's release THIRTY YEARS AGO - Jeezus I'm old - was preceded by mucho fanfare, with moviegoers anticipating that generation's defining summer movie, a la Star Wars.  Its interest bolstered by promotional images of landmark buildings being decimated by giant alien saucers, ID4 made an absolute KILLING at the box office, garnering over $800 million worldwide on a $75 mil budget.  It was assumed this would be the first of a trilogy since it was supposed to sorta be the next Star Wars and it grossed a fuckton.  But oddly a sequel was never made until two decades later.  Maybe the filmmakers didn't have another story to tell.  

Anywho, you might ask yourself "Why does ID4 qualify as an Awesomely Shitty Movie?"  Well my reasons this time are slightly different than usual.  For me, this film was unabashedly awesome the first time I watched it, and agonizingly shitty on every repeat viewing.  This is a prime example of a film you should only watch one time.  Then throw it away and never speak of it again.  Don't even think about it.  You'll only break your brain and end up in a home.

So let's pick apart this ham-fisted clod of a summer movie, shall we?



The Awesome

Effects

The special effects in this movie looked amazing at the time and for the most part still look at least pretty good a few decades later.  Some of the compositing is a little messy, particularly when they show the Earth from space, but the alien craft are still convincing, the model work (which I almost always prefer over excessive CG) looks tangible and believable, and there are multiple effects shots in the first hour or so that still hold up.

This part still works

Alien Ships Appear

For example the moments when the giant saucers appear over the various major cities.  We see several shots of the massive ships emerging from behind the clouds and it looks great.  The filmmakers expertly conveyed the scope of the spacecraft, showing us just how insanely huge and intimidating they are.  Few things are as immediately threatening as an alien ship blocking out the sun and spanning the width of an entire city.  Super cool-looking stuff.

So does this

Iconic Imagery

This film also provided several lasting images, such as the saucer blowing up the White House, the Empire State Building, etc.  These moments would have a huge influence on Hollywood blockbusters even to this day (More on that later).  Even the poster looked boss, depicting one of the ships hovering over New York City.  The marketing team certainly earned their keep with this movie.

And this

Movie Review: Obsession (2026)

Took me a little while to finally see this one, but at long last I have experienced the OTHER unexpected smash hit horror movie of 2026, Curry Barker's debut studio film Obsession.  Produced on an unfathomably paltry $750,000, this psychologically distressing thriller has to date grossed a staggering $370 million (one of the biggest ROIs in cinema history), spending five weeks in the number-two spot and becoming the first movie since E.T. to improve its box office take over the first three weekends of wide release.  Talk about a sleeper hit.  With the out-of-nowhere runaway success of both this film and Kane Parsons' Backrooms, it's an exciting time to be a cinephile and watch two 20-something directors with creative carte blanche put the big-budget studio pictures to shame.  We arguably haven't seen this kind of organic success from young maverick directors since the 70s, or at least the 90s.  There's a lesson to be learned here, right Hollywood??

But is Obsession any good?  Put simply, good lord, yes.  From Barker's incredibly disciplined direction (He and his collaborators did loads of previz work to minimize the production schedule), to the wire-taut, twistedly funny script, to the unbelievably chilling lead performance by Inde Navarrette (Seriously, this woman deserves some major award nominations in a few months), Obsession is one of the most unsettling films since Ari Aster burst on the scene eight years ago.

Oscar Film Journal: The Cider House Rules (1999)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  

Heading back to the late 90s for an old-fashioned Oscar bait movie, The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Halstrom and written by John Irving (based on his 1985 novel).  Cider House stars Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd and Michael Caine, in an Oscar-winning turn.  

Set mostly in the 1940s, the film begins by introducing Dr. Wilbur Larch (Caine), director of a rural Maine orphanage, and his protégé Homer Wells (Maguire).  Homer has grown up in the orphanage after two unsuccessful adoption attempts, and Larch takes him under his wing as a budding young physician.  Ultimately Homer becomes Larch's assistant despite having no formal medical certifications.  In addition to providing adoption services, Larch also discreetly performs abortions, an illegal procedure at that time.  One such case is that of Candy Kendall (Theron) and her boyfriend Wally Worthington (Rudd), a World War II enlisted pilot on leave.  After the abortion is performed Homer befriends the young couple and decides to leave the orphanage to learn the apple business (Wally's mother owns a nearby orchard and hires Homer as seasonal help).  Larch is devastated at Homer's departure, and while they keep in touch, Homer is content with his new line of work, befriending the other migrant workers and developing a romantic relationship with Candy while Wally is away.  The aging Larch, facing pressure from the orphanage's board of directors, fakes Homer's medical background to get them to approve him as an eventual successor, while Wally's impending return due to a crippling illness throws a wrench in Homer and Candy's romance.

This film feels like one of those old-fashioned critical darling melodramas, containing enough sensationalistic material for a checkout line novel, or a season of Degrassi High.  Unwanted pregnancies, torrid affairs, incest, stabbings, suicide, drug addiction, child deaths, and a faked medical degree.  If you were to assemble a stereotypical example of an Oscar bait movie from a checklist, it would look a lot like this.  Hell, there's even a Forrest Gump-esque, gentle piano-driven score.  

Awesomely Shitty Movies: Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

Welcome to the long-awaited return (by at least three people) of Awesomely Shitty Movies, here at Enuffa.com!  It's been a while for this feature, but at long last I found the time to sit down and watch a movie I can't help but sorta like, despite it being pretty goddamn terrible.  That "film" is the infamous (ya know, MORE than famous) 1967 television special "written" and "directed" by The Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour!

Inspired by mid-60s cross-country bus trips organized by author Ken Kesey, and mostly Paul McCartney's brainchild (though he later said he wasn't sure he wanted to take the full blame for it), Magical Mystery Tour tells the story (for lack of a better word) of the band and a group of their friends taking a bus excursion across the English countryside, interspersed with music videos of the band's latest songs (featured on the album of the same name).  And, well, that's it.  The Beatles attempted to conjure a plot out of thin air but the resulting film is more a collection of little episodes and sketches than it is a proper story.  It was horribly received upon its release (not helped by the fact that the BBC channel on which it originally aired didn't have color capability at the time), but has somewhat gained in popularity since (probably because The Beatles were involved) and currently enjoys a very generous 62% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (Disney probably paid them to put that there, amirite??).

I became a hardcore Beatles fan around age ten and sought out all their music and films, and in 1986 my parents bought me a low-grade VHS copy of this movie that looked like absolute cow shit.  And because it was a Beatles endeavor I'd convinced myself it was quality entertainment, knowing deep down it was a major misfire from a band I'd held up as infallible.  Still to this day part of my brain has a weird appreciation for this flop, and when I discovered a cheap Blu-Ray restoration on Ebay I had to bite.  In 1080p this film absolutely gains something back from a visual standpoint, so there's that at least.  And despite being a disorganized mess, parts of it have an offbeat charm to them.  But man, is this thing a clusterfuck if you go into it expecting an actual movie.

But enough introductions, let's take a look at the pluses and minuses of Magical Mystery Tour.  A Hard Day's Night this ain't.....



The Awesome


Beatles Songs

Any movie whose soundtrack is comprised of Beatles music automatically scores a few points with me (as it should with everyone).  Granted, the songs written specifically for this film, "I Am the Walrus" excluded, are probably not on anyone's Beatles top ten list.  But this movie is essentially strung together on a clothesline of Beatles music videos, so that aspect has to be considered its strongest feature.  Imagine how much better it would've been if it were built around the second side of the MMT album though.  "Strawberry Fields," "Penny Lane," "All You Need Is Love..."




Visuals

To that end, each music video is pretty cool visually.  Paul's "A Fool on the Hill" was shot in the mountains of France and boasts some beautiful natural scenery.  "Flying" largely consists of discarded landscape shots from Dr. Strangelove but with color filter effects (Did Stanley Kubrick lift that idea for similar shots in the 2001 "stargate sequence" or vice-versa?).  "I Am the Walrus" is a super bizarre, trippy video that Paul McCartney himself later cited as the one indisputable positive to come out of this film.  "Blue Jay Way" is gloomy and atmospheric like the song that inspired it.  "Your Mother Should Know" is a fun little ballroom act sequence.  On top of the videos, there are some interesting little touches scattered throughout.  The Aunt Jessie nightmare sequence for example includes an unnerving shot of a little person snapping photos from a swinging cage apparatus, a shot that would've been right at home in a David Lynch film.  So regardless of its myriad of shortcomings, Magical Mystery Tour definitely has no dearth of intruiging things to look at.

Top Ten Things: Star Trek Films RANKED

Welcome to another edition of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!

I've been a Star Trek fan since about the age of four when my parents were watching the original series on TV and I wandered into the room to see a weird dude with pointy ears and a bowl cut prattling on about space anomalies and whatnot.  From then I was hooked, and despite not understanding much of the sci-fi technobabble at that age, I could somehow easily identify with the gallant Captain Kirk, the crotchety Dr. McCoy, and of course the computer-minded Mr. Spock.  My fandom increased tenfold in the early 80s when I went to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and these characters and their adventures were presented on a much larger scale.  We were still treated to philosophical explorations of the human condition, but with much slicker production values and effects.

The Star Trek films were major events for me every 2-3 years and some of them still hold up among my favorite science fiction movies.  Thus far we've had three series of films; from 1979-1991 the original Star Trek cast graced the big screen, and then from 1994-2002 the Next Generation crew got their turn.  Finally in 2009 Paramount rebooted the series completely, recasting the original characters and converting Star Trek into more of a Star Wars-esque action franchise.

But how do the 13 movies stack up against each other?  

13. Star Trek: Insurrection

Star Trek: Insurrection has to be the weakest in the entire series, with its half-hearted storyline about a society of 600 Ba'ku hogging the life-extending resources of an entire planet at the expense of their dying brethren the Son'a, not to mention the billions of others who could be helped by this age-defying radiation.  And for some reason the Enterprise helps the Ba'ku stay there.  Huh??  Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?  It's hard to get invested in a movie when the good guys are on the wrong side of the issue.  F. Murray Abraham did what he could with the weak villain he was given to play, and of the NextGen films this one comes closest to resembling the TV show, but the story doesn't work and this feels like a B-movie.

12. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Next up is Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, a nigh-unwatchable mess of a film that clearly suffered from a Hollywood writer's strike, leaving director William Shatner without a coherent script.  After things wrapped up neatly at the conclusion of The Voyage Home, we now catch up with our gallant crew and their newly built Enterprise (which for some reason is nearly crippled by technical issues), as they're tapped to settle a hostage situation perpetrated by a mysterious Vulcan, who needs a starship to travel beyond the Great Barrier to find God.  The filmmakers tried to cram the action of Star Trek II and the humor of Star Trek IV into this one, and failed on basically every level to capture the spirit of either film.  Star Trek V cost $33 million, more than any previous Star Trek movie, yet the effects are Original Series bad.  Basically everything went wrong here, and Shatner would not be asked to direct another one.

11. Star Trek: Generations

Our final entry to fall short of the top ten is Star Trek: Generations, the one that kicked off the NextGen films.  Man, what a colossal disappointment this was.  The first NextGen film that also features Captain Kirk??  How could this be bad??  Well, the filmmakers found numerous and profound ways to screw this up.  Generations has some fun moments but its convoluted plot involving an energy ribbon that somehow absorbs people and lets them live out their wildest fantasies (and travel time and space at will should they choose to leave) simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, nor does the shoehorned involvement of Captain Kirk.  This film united the two iconic Enterprise Captains just to....have an awkwardly staged action movie fight sequence to stop a villain from firing a rocket?  Is this real life?  And did we really need to see the Klingons and their Bird of Prey AGAIN??  Generations marked the fifth consecutive Star Trek movie to feature this stupid ship model, and boy was I tired of seeing it by this point.  This movie sadly set the tone for what the NextGen film series would look like, and thus it's no surprise all four of them fell so drastically short of the lofty TV series.

10. Star Trek Beyond

Here's a movie I had high hopes for.  I'd read that this was the closest the new series had gotten to capturing the philosophical, character-driven bent of the original show.  And while Beyond has a little of that - Kirk for example laments early on that the ongoing voyage is taking its toll on him and his crew - sadly the film plunges almost immediately into an extended action sequence that leaves the Enterprise in pieces in a matter of minutes.  They didn't treat poor Enterprise well in these films, did they?  Anyway, the crew gets separated during the space battle and we learn a little about the villain Krall.  Mostly that his name is Krall.  Seriously, this film uses a fine actor like Idris Elba pretty shabbily.  He's given nothing to do in the first two acts except bark angrily, and it's not until the final half hour we're told his motivation and his true identity; by then it's hard to care.  What I liked about this film: Kirk had some solid character moments, McCoy and Scotty had more to do, the new character Jaylah was very cool and likable, Krall and Kirk had one poignant scene toward the end, and the Spock-Uhura romance was barely present.  What I didn't like: Krall is motivated by revenge just like the last three Star Trek villains, he's barely a character beyond that, there's once again too much emphasis on Star Wars-y action, and Spock's wig looks terrible.  Distractingly so.  Star Trek Beyond is the weakest of the most recent series.  And what exactly does "Beyond" refer to?

9. Star Trek: Nemesis

Nemesis is a guilty pleasure.  It's a pretty terrible, unnecessarily dour affair featuring a young clone of Captain Picard trying to destroy the Enterprise, Romulus and Earth, and contains far too many Wrath of Khan callbacks and a go-nowhere subplot involving an earlier model of Data, but damn if it isn't entertaining drivel.  A young, far less jacked Tom Hardy plays Shinzon, Picard's clone who spent his childhood enslaved on Romulus's sister planet Remus, building up a severe hatred for both his Romulan oppressors and his "father" Picard.  He fashions a giant evil starship to exact his revenge, and all hell breaks loose.  This template of a revenge-obsessed villain with a gigantic ship would oddly be used in some form for all three reboot films, despite Nemesis tanking at the box office.  Still this film includes some of the best space battle sequences in the NextGen series, plus Tom Hardy!  But it's not good...

8. Star Trek (2009)

The 2009 reboot essentially took the original series characters, boiled them down to their most easily identifiable cursory traits, and turned them into action heroes.  This film is an all-thrusters-ahead popcorn movie that vaguely resembles the series we all know and love.  Casting was key here, and fortunately Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, and Simon Pegg do an admirable job of reimagining their characters while staying more or less true to their predecessors.  This film is all about setting up the new version of Star Trek and thus the main plot is fairly forgettable.  A revenge-hungry Romulan named Nero has been chasing a future incarnation of Mr. Spock through time in retaliation for Spock's failing to save Romulus from a supernova, and a space battle ensues between the brand new Enterprise and Nero's monstrous vessel.  Star Trek 2009 is full of slick visuals, engaging action and light humor but fails to explore profound human themes the way the original series did.  Still it's a fun popcorn movie with characters we can all relate to, so not a total miss.

Oscar Film Journal: Master and Commander (2003)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!  Still pluggin' away at these Best Pic nominees...

Today we're heading back to the early aughts, for a 2003 nominee based on a series of popular novels by Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, directed by Peter Weir.  Part swashbuckling, seafaring adventure story, part intimate character study, part buddy movie, M&C stars Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey, captain of the Napoleonic warship HMS Surprise, and Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon and Jack's close friend.  Surprise's mission is to track and destroy a French vessel called Acheron before it can establish control of South American waters and expand Napoleon's footprint in the region.  

The film kicks off with an intense battle sequence, as the larger, faster, more heavily armed Acheron ambushes Surprise, inflicting heavy casualties and much damage.  Surprise escapes into a patch of fog, and Aubrey's crew must perform repairs on the fly to keep the ship afloat.  A second attack (this time at night) is thwarted by use of a makeshift decoy which leads Acheron off Surprise's tail.  

Movie Review: Backrooms (2026)

I finally made it to the theater to catch Backrooms, the new psychological horror film by YouTube sensation Kane Parsons (who at age 20 is younger than the platform itself), based on his own Backrooms (Found Footage) series.  Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, this fascinating, atmospheric thriller is set in 1990s California, where a furniture store owner discovers a seemingly endless maze of hidden passages attached to the store's basement.  As he obsessively explores the space, weirder and weirder things happen.  If you've read and enjoyed the 2000 novel House of Leaves, you'll be enthralled by this movie.

Movie Review: Masters of the Universe (2026)

As a child of the 80s I was exactly the right age in 1982 when Mattel dropped a 20-megaton awesome-bomb known as the Masters of the Universe toy line.  These oversized, brightly colored, impossibly muscular action figures absolutely captivated me from the get-go, and over the next four years or so I snapped up as many as I could get my hands on (I've been collecting Mattel's Retro Collection reissues over the last few years as well).  For me these toys still hold an incredible fascination; along with the original Star Wars line I consider the He-Man collection strange little works of art.

All this to say, when I learned Mattel and Amazon were teaming up to present a new, more faithful Masters of the Universe movie, I was immediately on board.  After the complete and total misfire that was the 1987 film, I was quite excited to see what the filmmakers could do in 2026 with adequate technology, a proper visual aesthetic, and stricter adherence to the silliness that the old Filmation cartoons brought to the table.  This movie scratches that itch pretty nicely.

Oscar Film Journal: Platoon (1986)

Welcome to another Oscar Film Journal entry, here at Enuffa.com!  I'm hoping to have finished viewing every Best Picture nominee within the next five years - only 247 left to go....

Today I'm circling back to the 1980s and a movie I've seen a few times but somehow always forget exactly how it goes.  It's the film that put Oliver Stone on the map as a director, the 1986 Best Picture winner Platoon.  Starring Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, and a host of prolific character actors like Keith David and Forest Whitaker, Platoon is loosely based on Stone's own experiences during the Vietnam War.  Intended as both a tribute to the men who fought there, and a propaganda-free, warts-and-all portrayal of what it was really like, Stone's screenplay pulls no punches, immersing the audience in the chaotic Hell on Earth that was this quagmire of a war.

Charlie Sheen's character is newly stationed volunteer Chris Taylor, a college dropout who, like so many young men in the 60s, dreamed of being part of something important like their WWII veteran fathers were.  The idea of fighting for their country seemed so simple and noble, but the illusion was quickly shattered when they arrived in the sweltering Far East jungle to face an enemy the US government severely underestimated, in service of a nebulous, undefined goal.  

Oscar Film Journal: The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

Time for another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

We're in the 1940s once again, looking at an odd little inclusion in Best Picture lore.  Today's subject has been much-discussed and analyzed, and mostly celebrated in spite of its myriad flaws and unforced studio errors that led to its not being the film it should've been.  I'm talking about The Magnificent Ambersons.  

This was Orson Welles' sophomore directorial effort, and the story behind it is just as intriguing as the movie itself.  Welles was famously signed by RKO Pictures after taking the radio and theater worlds by storm in the late 30s, and given creative carte blanche for his debut, the incomparable Citizen Kane.  Infamously that film not only went over-budget and over schedule, but its subject matter sparked a major feud with newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who used his massive media influence to try and cripple the film's distribution.  Kane was heralded as a major cinematic achievement but underwhelmed at the box office, and RKO management no longer trusted Welles with final cut.

Oscar Film Journal: All the King's Men (1949)

And we're back with another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

Today I'm heading to the 1940s again for the 1949 Best Picture winner, All the King's Men, starring Broderick Crawford and directed by Robert Rossen.  Based on Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer-winning novel, ATKM chronicles the rise of a political demagogue, an idealistic fellow named Willie Stark who runs for public office hoping to do away with political corruption.  But Willie doesn't have much success running a campaign the honest way and realizes he has to play by the dirty rules of politics to get things done, ultimately becoming the very thing he once detested.  As Governor he engages in graft, political intimidation, scandal coverups, character assassination, philandering and likely outright violence, using his populist charisma to bend the voters and the gears of power to his will (Gee, why does this all seem oddly relevant in 2026?).  By his side is a newspaper reporter-turned opposition researcher Jack Burden, who at first believes in Willie's platform but slowly begins to see what a parasitic con man he's become, as Willie ruins the lives of all of Jack's loved ones.

Top Ten Things: Star Wars Films, RANKED

Welcome to a Special Edition (See what I did there?) of Top Ten Things, here at Enuffa.com!  It's time for a ranking of the live-action Star Wars films, making this technically a Top TwelveThings....

I literally can't remember a time before Star Wars came into my life.  I was 18 months old when it came out, and I'm not sure when exactly I saw the original film.  I think it was probably during the 1979 re-release but I can't be sure.  I am however certain that I saw Empire multiple times in the theater between 1980 and 1982, and rushed out to see Return of the Jedi in '83.  The original unaltered trilogy is still my favorite series of films (I can't watch the Special Editions anymore, I just can't), and it's still the yardstick by which I measure every other movie trilogy.

When the prequels were released from 1999-2005 I was hooked on those right away too.  Only later as I actually thought about them did I realize how far short they fell, and for the better part of a decade I'd resigned myself to being an OT purist.  But then Disney bought the property and took the series back to all the things I'd originally loved about it - enduring characters, profound themes, thrilling battles, and visually stunning worlds and creatures.  The Star Wars series was ready to expand, for realsies this time.

But how do the films stack up against each other?  Well if you read my intro the lowest-ranked entries should be no surprise.  So let's get to it - here are my rankings for the Star Wars live-action films.....

12. Attack of the Clones

Sigh... yeah, I gotta get through the three bad ones before I get to the good ones.  Look, when the prequels first came out I was so blinded by my love of Star Wars that I couldn't see the glaring, logic-defying, nonsensical plot contrivances that made the story being told incomprehensible.  And I was so dazzled by "oooh, lightsabers!" that I forgave the embarrassing performances from nearly every cast member (Seriously, Natalie Portman is an Oscar-winning actress and George Lucas failed to get even one passable performance out of her in these films).  The specific problems with the prequels have been explored ad nauseum, so I won't go into too much detail, but suffice it to say, there really isn't one redeeming thing about Attack of the Clones.  The storyline of Obi-Wan discovering an illegally created clone army that the Republic then actually uses(??) makes no sense and is pointless as the main plot of a film.  Why wasn't the middle chapter of this trilogy dedicated to the actual Clone Wars?  Isn't that what everyone was looking forward to, aside from seeing the creation of Darth Vader?  Instead we get the very beginning of the Clone Wars here and it turns out to be a fake war orchestrated by Palpatine just so he can remain in power, while not one of our protagonists can see through this shovel-to-the-face obvious ploy.  Plus we get the worst love story ever put to film.  Plus we get PlayStation One-esque CGI in every frame.  Plus the aforementioned terrible acting.  Plus the "I don't like sand" speech.  This stuff is Ed Wood-bad.  Attack of the Clones is the worst live-action theatrical Star Wars film.

11. The Phantom Menace

Only slightly less terrible is Episode I, in which the dialogue is every bit as cringeworthy, the story every bit as preposterous, and the acting equally wooden.  Plus fucking Jar Jar.  Damn, this is a tough call....  But what The Phantom Menace has over Clones is twofold - the pod racing sequence is fun, despite being a totally convoluted way just to get Anakin off Tatooine, and Darth Maul is a badass villain, despite only having ten minutes of screen time and no real character to speak of.  From a technical standpoint the lightsaber duel in this film is the best of the series (Sure, there's exactly zero going on between the participants, but the choreography is cool at least).  So those two aspects are enjoyable, even if the rest of the film isn't.  But yeah, The Phantom Menace is drivel.

Movie Review: The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)

It's been six-and-a-half years since Disney gave us a new Star Wars film, but the theatrical experience is finally back, in the form of The Mandalorian and Grogu!

Taking place sometime after the third season of the TV show, M&G picks up as Mando and his young ward are working in tandem with the fledgling New Republic, represented in this film by Colonel Ward (Sigourney Weaver), to hunt down the remaining pockets of Imperial loyalists and bring them to justice.  We jump right into the action as Mando takes down a squad of AT-ATs, once again channeling both Batman and Clint Eastwood.  Once that mess is cleaned up, Ward has a new mission for him: find and bring home Jabba the Hutt's son Rotta, and in exchange his aunt and uncle will provide vital information on the whereabouts of a high-ranking Imperial warlord.  Mando must travel to Shakari, where Rotta is reportedly being held against his will and forced to participate in gladiatorial games.  Action ensues.

Alright, let's get some stuff out of the way first....

Movies of Disbelief: Star Wars (1977)

Welcome to another Movies of Disbelief here at Enuffa.com!  It's time to discuss an unnecessarily major beef I have with one of my favorite films.....

Star Wars.  Just saying those two little words conjures up so much imagery, nostalgia, and special effects badassery.  In 1977 George Lucas dropped perhaps the greatest-ever 200-megaton awesome-bomb on the world, in the form of his sci-fi/fantasy swashbuckler, introducing us all to iconic characters Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, and of course Darth Vader.  If you didn't grow up with Star Wars in your life, I'm sorry, your childhood was trash.  This film and its two sequels shaped so many lives, and eventually spawned a bona fide pop culture empire (See what I did there?) that keeps churning out new material every year.

So yeah, it's safe to say I'm a Star Wars fan.  No, scratch that, I'm a Star Wars OG.  I've been in Star Wars Heaven since '77.  Well probably more like '79, I was only 18 months old when the first movie came out.  As far as I'm concerned the original film is still the best of the entire franchise.  Empire is a damn close second, but to me A New Hope is one of the most perfect cinematic experiences ever crafted.  And it's Unaltered or nothing by the way, none of that Special Edition bullshit.  I don't need to see cartoon Jabba showing up or a CG-cluttered Mos Eisley, and don't even get me started on Greedo.  If you believe the updated version of that scene is superior to Han preemptively blasting Greedo through the fucking pelvis, you should check directly into a home for the criminally insane, as you are a danger to both yourself and others.

Take this shit right here, put it in a box, and throw it in the fucking ocean.

Anyway, even though Star Wars is one of my absolute favorite films ever made in this or any universe, there are nonetheless a few plot contrivances numerous people have pointed out, and that was even before Lucas completely fucked up the continuity with Special Editions and prequels.  The first and perhaps most frequently cited is when C-3P0 and R2-D2 launch an escape pod from Tantive IV and the Imperial gunners decide not to shoot it down, something which would have prevented the entire film from happening.  Way to cover your bases, assholes.  Another is, why didn't the Death Star just blow up the planet of Yavin, thus destroying the fourth moon and the Rebel Base with it, instead of taking the time to orbit around and allow the Rebels a chance to attack?  But these nitpicks are forgivable considering how fantastic the rest of the movie is.

I hope these two nitwits got Force-choked
and then Vader peed on their dead bodies.

Where I draw the line though is at Luke keeping the surname Skywalker despite being raised in hiding from his now evil father and the more evil Emperor.  Twenty years earlier Luke and his twin sister were separated and reared by different families so as not to pop up on Vader's radar (That almost rhymes).  Leia became Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.  But not only did they send Luke to Vader's home planet of Tatooine, they called him Luke SKYWALKER, after his father.  Real nice subterfuge, dummies.  Wait a second though, Luke grew up with his "uncle" Owen Lars, whom he was raised to believe was Anakin's brother, yes?  So why the hell wasn't he called Luke Lars?  And if Luke thinks Owen is his actual uncle, how did they explain to him why his father's surname wasn't also Lars?  Maybe they shared with him the terribly uninteresting saga of the time Anakin showed up at the Lars homestead and brought his dead mother home, and then left?  Jeezus what a boring bedtime story.  "Uncle Owen, how come my name is Skywalker?"  "Well Luke, your dad's mom married my dad.  I only met him for ten minutes and frankly didn't know him from Adam.  He was exactly nothing to me.  So forget all that stuff I told you about how he went off to war and I resented him for it.  'Twas all pure nonsense that homeless hippie Ben told me to tell you.  Here's what really happened, my stepbrother showed up, asked about his mom, buried her corpse in the backyard over there, and then skipped town with our protocol droid.  Wait, DID I JUST BUY BACK MY OWN FUCKING PROTOCOL DROID??  Son of a two-dollar whore!!!"

God I hate the prequels....


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Oscar Film Journal: Quiz Show (1994)

Welcome back to the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!

We're swingin' back to 1994 to close out that year, with Robert Redford's historical drama Quiz Show, chronicling the scandal that rocked television....well, quiz shows in the 1950s, when it was discovered through a Congressional investigation that one popular show in particular, Twenty-One, was not on the level.

John Turturro and Ralph Fiennes star as two wildly successful contestants.  Awkward, uncharismatic Herb Stempel (Turturro) has been on an unprecedented winning streak that for a while kept America glued to the television, but ratings are beginning to stagnate and the show's producers (David Paymer and Hank Azaria), along with the head of the show's sponsor Geritol (welcome surprise Martin Scorsese) and the NBC President (reptilian character actor Allan Rich), have decided it's time his streak came to an end.  Enter the debonair scion of a well-respected family of intellectuals Charles Van Doren (Fiennes), who auditions for the NBC shows to supplement his lowly income as a college instructor and demonstrates prodigious knowledge of various subjects, and the powers that be decide he's the perfect successor to Stempel.  An arrangement is made with both contestants that Stempel will stumble on an easy question (What film won the Best Picture Oscar for 1955?) and Van Doren will become the new champion by answering questions the he's already heard.  Van Doren becomes a sensation and his family hopes it will spark a wave of intellectualism across America.  But Stempel contacts the New York District Attorney's office to blow the whistle on the whole scam, and a young lawyer named Dick Goodwin (a surprisingly effective Rob Morrow doing a pretty good Boston accent) works to take down the network.