Today, I’m going to go with a new format for The Morning After. Each film will have its own separate review posting and this article will bear links to each individual movie review. The only review content that won’t merit it’s own page will be television series reviews, which will continue to be highlighted in this article.

So, here is what I watched this weekend:

The Player (1992)

Robert Altman is the master of the ensemble piece. Never has that been more clear than in The Player, a film that blends real actors with actors playing characters. At times it’s hard to remember who’s playing someone real and who’s not and although we get quite a bit of name-dropping, it doesn’t help some scenes. Still, it’s hard to imagine a film more keenly in Altman’s wheelhouse. Set in a fictional movie studio where an executive listens to pitch after pitch of cornball movie ideas, he is visited by a threat on his life, leading from a writer he ignored five months before. Tim Robbins gives a bit of weight to the role of the executive who tries to uncover the culprit and cut off a potential violent encounter and then ultimately kills the man he believes has been threatening him. The film plays as a murder mystery, but also as a comic fable about the movie industry. Building on every element we come to expect from the cutthroat industry, Altman drives his characters to perform as if they were a little outlandish and unrealistic while encouraging them to light up each scene. It’s an interesting, sometimes-stinging portrait of the film industry and even if a bit larger than life, it gets its biting point across effectively.

Psych, Season 5 (episodes 13-16)

As I expected when finishing the amazing “Dual Spires” episode, the remaining four episodes lacked the creative spark of that best-of-season episode. There was still a great bit of fun to be had in three of the episodes, but the season finale was quite a bit of a let down. Taking a cue from the closing episodes of the prior seasons, we are taken back to the Yin Yang serial killer and expected to believe that we’ve finally come to a resolution. The need to return to this tired saga shows where the series has tended to go wrong. The first time we were introduced to this story arc, we got a handful of episodes that focused on it leading up to a spectacular final episode. Yet, this season had no build up whatsoever, the episode just happened and picked up where the prior had left off a season prior and expected the audience to follow along happily. Not only did this episode not adequately re-ignite the passion from the prior seasons, but it failed to give us much more than shockingly humorless police procedural cliche. The show has never shied away from standing the genre on its ear, but seldom has it been more mainstream. When the inevitable next season starts up, I hope the writers decide not to revisit this tired storyline and instead give us something that lasts more than a few episodes, perhaps hinted at early on. and peppered throughout the season. Since I doubt that will happen, at least we can hope that the Yin Yang case is finally closed.

Star Trek (The Original Series): Dagger of the Mind

This episode could have been about so much more. It could have been about how, as a society, we attempt to rehabilitate criminals through various methods but how, in the future, scientific methods of behavior modification have the ability to do more than that. They have the ability to erase the mind and re-mold people in someone else’s image, to manipulate another human being and take away his free will and ability to reason. The episode does a fine job putting the situation out there for debate, but never gives the audience the idea that it should consider it. The kernel is there, but the episode makes it more about the strength of a mind that can resist such conditioning lies in the mind of few and that left with emptiness in the mind, a body has little option than to die. It’s not a bad resolution, but the potential was so much greater.

Star Trek (The Original Series): The Corbomite Maneuver

Now we get into the more rudimentary, frustrating and pointless episodes of Star Trek. This poker game in space has very little emotional, scientific or thought-provoking element. It may be nice to celebrate the episode as some examination of human perseverance, man’s ability to adapt and control his situation or the ability to stand up against insurmountable force and stare down death in an effort to survive, but those concepts seem to high minded to assign to an episode like this, which really just sits poorly compared to other episodes in the franchise.

Star Trek (The Original Series): The Menagerie, Part 1

The first two-parter in the franchise history takes us back to the pilot episode and, through a fun and interesting story, shows us the original episode without muss. This is the first and perhaps only time I can remember where a pilot episode, which was never shown, was transformed into an integral part of a later episode of the series. It’s interesting watch how the writers weave the original story back into the current timeline without much effort. It’s an interesting episode that will be completed in the second episode (to be continued next week…maybe).