#nom visual effects

Star Trek: the Motion Picture (1979). When an alien spacecraft of enormous power is spotted approaching Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk resumes command of the overhauled USS Enterprise in order to intercept it.

I love Star Trek a lot,but this is definitely not the franchise at its best. It’s a fairly generic space opera that never really grounds us in the crew we love, instead frequently sacrificing story for a lot of long, languid shots of space and a main plot that never really finds its footing. Not my favourite installment in the series by any stretch of the imagination, but still, it looks pretty good, and it’s still Star Trek. 6/10.

The Black Hole (1979). A research vessel finds a missing ship, commanded by a mysterious scientist, on the edge of a black hole.

I just couldn’t get into this one at all. It feels like a mash-up of Airplane and Star Wars, but somehow manages to lose every ounce of fun in the process of that. The score’s pretty good though, plus Anthony Perkins is always a plus. 4/10.

The Black Stallion (1979). After being shipwrecked with a magnificent horse off the coast of Africa in the 1940s, a boy bonds with the stallion, and trains him to race after their rescue.

I’ve seen a lot of horse movies for this project, and I do think this is one of the better ones. That’s almost entirely due to the lush and evocative cinematography, which must’ve been spectacular to watch on the big screen! It’s really beautiful stuff. Otherwise, this movie is a pretty conventional horse racing movie with a minor twist in the opening with the boy and the horse being shipwrecked together. It’s worth checking out, especially if you like the genre. 7/10.