Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

I saw "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" as part of a birthday party for a kid named Mark, back in grade 6.  He and his friend Tom approached me in the schoolyard to invite me.  (Birthday parties were smaller back in those days - it was only the three of us.)

Movie poster for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" (1979)

We went to McDonald's for dinner beforehand, where all of us got "Star Trek" happy meals.  (I still remember one of the games on the side of the box "Can you spot the real McCoy?" in which you had to identify McCoy's face from among a bunch of similar faces.)

The film is known for being slow-moving, but I was fascinated by astronomy and space travel as a kid, and so it held my interest.  I distinctly remember being awed by the lengthy docking sequence, which seemed more realistic than anything in Star Wars.

For some reason, I never saw Star Trek II (1982), III (1984), or IV (1986) in movie theatres.  The next installment in the franchise that I actually saw in a theatre was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989), which is not considered one of the best.

A couple of years later, I watched Star Trek II and III back to back on VHS during a field course.  I rented Star Trek IV on my return, and started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation pretty regularly, thereafter, seeing all the remaining films in theatre.

I missed the J.J. Abrams reboots when they came out, but had a chance to catch them with my son at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.  I thought they were pretty good, but he prefers anime these days, and found them tedious.

Superman: The Movie (1978)

I remember seeing a commercial for "Superman: The Movie" while watching Saturday morning cartoons, back when it came out.  My brother and I jumped out of our seats, and ran to tell my mother.  I think we might have gone to see it, that same day.

Movie poster for "Superman: The Movie" (1978)

Like many boys our age, we collected comic books.  Every Sunday, our family would stop at a convenience store on the way back from church, where my brother and I would choose from the spinner rack.  (I leaned towards Marvel, while he preferred DC.)

Watching the Superman movies with my kids when they were young, I was struck by the mythic aspects of the film - the weird, alien technology of Krypton, the echoes of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, the overt religious symbolism.

Back then, we never saw any conspicuous product placement on TV or in the movies, so I remember people chuckling when we spotted Ma Kent with a box of Cheerios.  (There used to be a lot more audience engagement at the movies.)

We couldn't believe it when Lois Lane died, although even as a ten year-old, I knew that flying around the planet wouldn't make it rotate backwards, or reverse the flow of time.  In retrospect, I suppose that it was only Superman who traveled back in time.

I think I started my lifelong obsession with remaining until the end of the closing credits with this film (I remember that they were particularly long, and that everybody else wanted to leave).  That's how we got the heads up about "Superman II".

Star Wars (1977)

I think I first learned of Star Wars when a kid in Grade 4 named Bruce asked me if I'd seen it yet.  Not only hadn't I seen it, I had no idea what he was talking about.  Before too long, everybody had seen it, and so I tried to convince my mother to take me.

Movie poster for "Star Wars" (1977)

It took some convincing, but my mom finally spoke to one of my aunts, who suggested that they take my siblings and me, along with my cousins, to see it.  We went to the old Odeon Theatre on Bloor Street West, getting there with plenty of time to spare.

It was rather late during the theatrical run, so the theatre wasn't packed.  I sat beside my cousin Vicky.  At one point I heard a disturbance to my right (my brother knocking my sister's popcorn out of her hands, after blaming her for dropping his).

Once the movie started, we were all rather into it.  None of us had ever seen anything like it.  I remember my mother trying to shield my 4 year-old sister's eyes from the sight of Uncle Owen's smoldering corpse.  And yep, Han shot first.

I owned a few Star Wars action figures, mostly acquired through trading, but never became a fanatic.  We got my parents to buy us the John Williams soundtrack, and I would read the Star Wars storybook while listening to the soundtrack.

I saw the re-release in 1997, and also episodes I-III when they came out, but I've yet to see episodes VII-IX (perhaps I'll see them all, back to back, one day).  I also enjoyed Rogue One (2016) when it was released, but didn't see Solo (2018), either.

The Island at the Top of the World (1974)

My first trip to the movies was with my father, when I was only six years old.  I can still remember how excited I was to be doing something special with him!  I didn't know what to expect, but I was all in.  The movie?  Disney's "The Island at the Top of the World".

Movie poster for "The Island at the Top of the World"  (1974)

The film was released on December 20, 1974 together with mini-featurette "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too".  I recall entering the darkened theatre, after the mini-featurette had already started, to see Tigger sliding down the printed margins of a book.

Unfortunately, the movie couldn't hold the attention of my six-year old self, and at some point I turned to my father and asked to leave.  I remember that he seemed a bit surprised, and was at first reluctant to go, but I insisted, so we got up and left.

Feeling nostalgic, I rented this film over the holidays, and was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable it was.  A rich industrialist convinces an archeologist to join him on an expedition to the Arctic in search of his son.  Their mode of transportation is a French airship.

Actor Mako, who later played the wizard in "Conan the Barbarian" (1982) was cast as Oomiak, an Inuit guide.  Discovering a lost enclave of Norsemen, the expedition is ultimately successful, although complications naturally ensue.

The screenplay was based on the 1961 novel "The Lost Ones" by Donald G. Payne, writing under the pseudonym Ian Cameron, and represents a late example of "lost world" fiction popularized by writers such as Jules Verne, H. Rider Haggard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.