Well JPFmovie fans here is a blast from the past that’s been under the radar for most of the population: John Carpenters’ They Live (1988). Despite its age, this film was recently in the news because neo-Nazis and anti-semites took to claiming on various white power websites that Carpenter’s paranoid sci-fi action flick was an allegory for “Jewish control of the world.” When we here at JPFmovies read this nonsense, we had the same reaction as director Carpenter who said in a tweet ““THEY LIVE is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie.” The morons who believe the film was created for some white power fools are possibly the stupidest people alive.
That said, They Live reached cult classic status more than a decade ago because that is exactly what it is—a cult classic. The film stars the recently deceased Roddy Piper (1954-2015) (the former WWF professional wrestler) as a no-name wonderer who is down on his luck living on the street while looking for any kind of work. As the wanderer arrives in Los Angeles (arriving from Colorado) he is initially rebuffed by an employment agency but his luck changes a little when he stumbles onto a construction site and after a little groveling is given a job. After a hard day’s work, the wanderer is approached by another laborer who directs Piper to a shanty town located in some vacant lot. During his stay in the shanty town, the T.V. shows are hacked by some bizarre person talking about the masses staying asleep and the population is being breed as “livestock.”
The wanderer realizes that the man on television is in a local church where he discovers that the church it is actually the headquarters of an underground organization. The shanty town is subject to a violent police shakedown and Piper starts to believe that something is rotten in the state of Denmark so to speak. To learn more, he re-enters the church and finds a box full of sunglasses that allows his to see the world as it is. Though sunglasses found by Piper appear to be worthless, they actually provide him with the greatest gift of all: The Truth and the truth is shocking. After discovering the truth, Piper gets really pissed off and grabs a shotgun and starts shooting aliens.
After the aliens realize that the wanderer can see through their disguise, they immediately alert the authorities saying “I’ve got one that can see.” Being able to “see” is obviously frowned upon by the aliens – they do not like to be exposed. Piper says the profound and timeless words: “I don’t like this ooooooooone bit.”
Upon learning the shocking truth about the world, the wanderer needs to get others to see the truth as well and shares this vital information with his friend Frank Armitage. However some people do not want to hear about it. When Piper asks Frank to put on his sunglasses so he can see what he sees, Frank firmly refuses and calls him a “crazy motha…” But Piper replies with another classic line “Either you put these sunglasses on or start eating that trash can.” What comes next is arguably the longest one-on-one fight scene consisting of eight minutes of punching and kicking, which is dragged out for so long that it becomes comical.
After convincing his friend that the world is not what it seems to be, a shooting spree ensues. While at a bank, Piper says the famous line “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I’m all out of bubblegum” and then starts shooting every alien he sees. During his shooting spree, he meets Holly Thomspon, a Cable 54 network executive that always somehow brings trouble. During a resistance meeting she poses as a sympathizer and claiming that where she works–Cable 54–“was clean” and not the source of aliens’ signal, which was false and misleading. The wanderer and his friend Frank however attack Cable 54 anyways where Holly appears again, claiming that she wants to help him. However, she is simply trying to kill him before the mission is accomplished. She is simply another human that sold out to the aliens being used to disrupt non-corrupted humans attempting to liberate themselves and others. Despite the odds against him Piper manages to take down the aliens’ transmitter and saves humanity. His heroics get him killed, however, as a policeman inside a helicopter shoots him dead, but while dying, the wanderer gives the alien/cops the proverbial finger!
What a film! Aliens, statements about America’s consumer culture, shotguns classic one-liners and flipping the police the bird before dying—frankly it doesn’t get much better than this. This is a JPFmovies must see film that will hopefully make you part of its “cult.”
J.P.'s I'm Outta Here Movie Thoughts 
JPFmovies’ next foray into the Sci-Fi world: Star Trek Enterprise (2001-2005). Almost everyone complained about it but we didn’t think it was bad.
The creation of Netflix, probably the greatest innovation for movie and T.V. fans since the introduction of HBO and similar channels, has given people like us at JPFmovies the ability to “binge” watch movies/T.V. series. Well, we went on an Enterprise “binge” in “the blind” so to speak—not having followed any of the trials, tribulations and fan/producer politics. If you look through our reviews over the years you will find very few T.V. series, much less American produced television. In other words, we were not influenced by all the political machinations surrounding the three previous Star Trek series beginning in the 1980s and running though the late 1990s or by the opinions of their fans and producers. So when we went on our Enterprise “binge” it was really with a fresh eye. And you know what? We thought it was a decent show (except for the theme song).
That said, when we searched the Internet for information about Enterprise, almost all the content we saw was invariably negative. Enterprise was blamed for the end of the Star Trek franchise that had been running since the 1980s. Fans blamed the show’s lack of continuity and rather thin plot while producers Berman and Braga argued it was some sort of “franchise fatigue”—a position we here at JPFmovies find self-serving, trying to avoid taking responsibility for the show’s short run.
So when we watched the show with a fresh eye, JPFmovies thought the show didn’t deserve all the criticism it received and should have been given some more seasons to let the show get some more traction. Those of us at JPFmovies thought that T’Pol (the ever present Vulcan) was an interesting change of pace from the traditional steely-eyed monotoned alien who spouted nothing but “logic.” As a Vulcan, she walked the line between Vulcans repressing their emotions and having them. Frankly I didn’t mind seeing some emotions underneath the typical Vulcan surface. We also read a lot of complaints that the actress playing T’Pol could not act and was there only for her eye candy appeal. To deny she was eye candy would be foolish, but she also did a good job playing a full time female Vulcan. In fact, a JPFmovie consultant found an interview with her where she herself said that you need more than eye candy to make a Trek series—you also needed decent stories. So she was aware of the limits that she could provide as a model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQI-8UTCiLg&list=PLVPRF54oc1fzmZ-ivicZj_39XLzGW0K7v
We also found Enterprise a nice change of pace in that the Capitan was not an all knowing, never making any mistakes character, i.e. larger than life. Scott Bakula, as Capitan Archer, screws up all the time—as he should, because Enterprise was humanity’s first venture into space beyond our system. Picard, Sisko, and Janeway always made the right calls—never faltering. Archer was constantly screwing up, as the Vulcan delegation on earth was quick to point out. A human out there in space interacting with aliens (hostile or not) is going to make mistakes—and lots of them. There was also the ship’s doctor, Phlox, an alien who proved quite interesting—a “Denoublan” who used odd creatures in the course of his medical treatments and had three wives who each had three husbands. He was always a great one to watch. Then too, Jeffrey Combs, who played many roles on DS9, was great as Commander Shram—the head of an alien race called the Andorians.
To keep this review at a readable length, the last thing we will comment on was Enterprise itself. The ship, unlike Voyager, TNG’s Enterprise, and DS9’s invulnerable space-station, was fragile—prone to damage and breaking. The ship never had shields or phasors (until several episodes in). Much more often than not, Enterprise was no match for many of the alien ships that it encountered. Again, something that one should expect when humans first begin to explore space outside of our solar system.
We read an article on Syfy’s site which also brought up some good points as to why Enterprise didn’t go the distance: The Internet! TNG, DS9 and Voyager were essentially all pre-Internet boom shows, while Enterprise was subject to hypercritical analysis, which was like a cloud of noise that had a profound impact on the ability of others to just enjoy Enterprise, and also created the perception that the show was more reviled than it actually was. Another interesting fact we didn’t know about Enterprise that sprang from the Internet was that it was unsurprisingly, one of the most pirated shows from 2001–2005 on sites like the Pirate Bay—so many viewers would not be reflected in the ratings. Two ideas that JPFmovies put some serious stock in.
Despite all the “bad press” Enterprise was subjected to, it seems that the show is having a renaissance, many people are going to back to watch the show streaming on such outlets as Netflix, and the “bad press” is starting to be replaced with more positive posts—a long overdue interpretation of the series.
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Posted by JPFmovies on April 20, 2017 in Movie Reviews
Tags: commentary, enterprise, movies, reviews, sci-fi, scott backula, star trek, syfye, Television, time travel, Women