I saw an interesting old military buddy movie over the weekend, Soldier in the Rain. Sgt. Slaughter (Jackie Gleason) is a lifer in the Army. Sgt. Clay (Steve McQueen) is looking forward to the end of his enlistment so he can get to work on his get-rich-quick schemes. Despite the reputations of stars, this is neither a comedy nor an action movie, although there are comic moments and a barroom brawl or two.

There isn't an overall plot -- it's more a string of short stories documenting Slaughter and Clay's adventures in the Army and life more generally. Clay and Slaughter put one over on Lt. Magee (Tom Poston) so Clay can get a fan on his desk. Clay gets into a car accident while training the geeky PFC Meltzer (Tony Bill), allowing Clay and Slaughter to outwit the annoying MP Sgt. Priest (Ed Nelson) and meet the teenager (Tuesday Weld) who isn't as worldly as she thinks she is. And if you wait until the end -- yes, that's Adam West playing a captain in the inspection scene.

Nothing spectacular here. No pies in the face or exploding anything -- just a Pepsi machine that gets a bit temperamental now and then in the way vending machines can be. But an absorbing 90-minute slice of life with two stars doing something other than what they're best known for.

We watched the JJA Star Trek movie this week with my nephews (who have never seen any ST). And I'm still seriously pissed off about the bullshit ending. Between the nonsensical way they "escape a collapsing black hole" and then they have Kirk jump five ranks from Cadet to Captain! ARGH.

At best, Kirk should have been forgiven for cheating and the insubordination, and then, upon graduation, gotten a plum gig as a junior officer on a ship that would give him lots of command experience. But nobody in their right mind gives an ENSIGN command of a vessel with 400+ people on board.

... still angry.

Also JJA has no idea how big space is: that whole movie took place in like 36 hours, including going from Earth to Vulcan and then chasing Nero back to Earth. Nonsense!

Rargh.

In The Force Awakens, JJA seemed to believe that people one one planet could look up in the sky and see another full-sized planet being destroyed. Never mind the gravitational effects of another planet being THAT CLOSE in the first place.

Clearly JJ has the same respect for military protocol as he does for astronomical distances.

Yeah, I haven't bothered with any of the JJA Treks after the first. The cast is phenomenal and I appreciate them using a very Trekkian alternate timeline explanation to prevent overwriting the existing universe, but the whole plot makes zero sense and breaks just about every rule of how the Star Trek universe works. It's a fun movie if you ignore all the nonsense but it's a terrible version of Star Trek.

I haven't seen any of these but it occurred to me - did he stick to the old error of having audible explosions in space?

It's a fun movie if you ignore all the nonsense but it's a terrible version of Star Trek.

My feelings exactly. It's a fun, kinda dumb SF movie. It is not Star Trek. It's acceptable as an alternate universe very very far removed from the original timeline, only because the names are the same and I really like this version of McCoy.

JJA should've done Star Wars instead. He didn't grok Trek even a little bit.

JJA should've done Star Wars instead.

Did he do Rise of Skywalker? I honestly can't even remember.

He did Force Awakens and Rise of Skywalker.

And those proved he grokked star wars about as much.