The Serpent's Egg, The Last Laugh, Inglourious Basterds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, & Star Trek

The Serpent's Egg is just depressing. David Carradine is a Jewish trapeze artist whose brother kills himself and whose sister-in-law starts to break down, and this is all against the backdrop of 1923 Weimar Germany. And there's lots of foreshadowing of the rise of Nazism and the horrors of the Holocaust. Ingmar Bergman moved out of his comfort zone and just whiffed on this one.

The Last Laugh is one of the most famous silent films of all time, mainly due to there being no intertitles. Well, there's one, and honestly, I would have liked the movie much more had the entire ending not been there. When you have the movie just come out and say "I've added a happy ending because I don't want you to be depressed", that's just crap, although the coming out and telling you just how cynical the ending was made it clear that Murnau never would have done it without being forced. Before that point, it's a depressing look at a doorman, played by Emil Jannings, who is fired basically for being old, and he starts to be ignored by everyone and spirals into horribleness. Technically masterful, definitely a worthwhile silent film.

Inglourious Basterds has Emil Jannings appear, who was in real life a huge Nazi. I think that was just the topping on the cake that was the most satisfying WWII film I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot. Really, the film has a Jew beating on a Nazi with a baseball bat (what can you do?). Besides that, it has Quentin Tarantino being ridiculously awesome with his dialogue and full of hilarious film references. There's just so much awesome in it that it's hard for me to remotely objective. Samuel L. Jackson as the narrator of the story of Til Schweiger as the Nazi-hating German, B.J. Novak in the interrogation scene, Michael Fassbender's explanation for his accent, everything that Christoph Waltz does in the entire film (especially the strudel), and Brad Pitt. Just the way he says "Oblige him" is worth the movie. I also loved the switching fonts in the credits and the words not translated in the subtitles. Just all the bits of the film that call attention to the filmness of it just made me love it more. The few references to the original Inlgorious Bastards were minor, and really completely secondary to my enjoyment. Except that it's clear that if you want a great movie, you need actual talent involved.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is... utterly unnecessary. Even if it did finally give people something to say other than Jump the Shark. Nuke the fridge is only one of the many ridiculous things involved in this film, including ripping off better things from earlier Indiana Jones films, and is just... eh. Honestly, if the film were worse I'd have some kind of interest in mocking it, but it's really just not good enough to praise or bad enough to mock. Just eh.

Star Trek is the flip-side: big budget filmmaking that works pretty much unreservedly. Sure the lens flares were annoying, but when that's the biggest complaint you have about a film, that's not too bad at all. Everyone was just about right, the story was exciting, the call backs to Star Treks before were quite clever, and I am curious to know if this new timeline also has an extremely annoying Wesley Crusher? Actually, I really haven't seen any of the shows (an episode here and there), but I've seen 2-6, plus the first two Next Generation movies (so that's 7-8?). So I'm not a hard core Trekkie, but I am familiar enough with the Internet to know memes when they exist, and I've picked up quite a bit of Trek knowledge from my friends. But the film works quite well as an action movie.