Es Muy Bueno: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

It's easy to mentally reduce Khan to just a couple hours of world-class scenery-chewing and a major character death made cheap by planned resurrection. And those are valid complaints (although I'd argue that Shatner's and Montalban's overacting is actually pretty enjoyable on its own terms, and that they both do a good job of getting the core of their characters across-- it's just that you've got two guys doing overdone stage acting in the middle of a more-or-less Method cast). But you really don't have to look very hard to see that Khan is really one hell of a movie.

Unlike 95% of science fiction movies, Khan benefits from a fantastic screenplay. Let's take a quick look at what it gets right:

-All of the action emerges naturally from well-established character traits. Kirk suffering a late-life malaise after being promoted out of ship command is a natural next step for the character. Similarly, Khan's pissiness and desire for revenge are long-established.

-At several points in the movie, the heroes are put in palpable danger. This has as much to do with direction as screenplay, but we'll talk about it anyway. In the first encounter between Enterprise and Reliant (which comes, by the way, after a wonderfully-executed buildup of tension as Reliant refuses to communicate), it's a shock when Reliant starts blowing the piss out of the heroes' ship. It's a surprise, and the resulting sense of "anything can happen" shakes you out of complacency and allows for the feeling that someone could actually suffer here.

-Kirk's heroism extends only to being a very competent warship commander. No cheesy one-on-one battles, no hand-to-hand combat. It's essentially a naval movie, and the screenplay shows remarkable restraint for a Star Trek movie by recognizing that. In real life Ray Spruance didn't win the battle of Midway by duking it out with Admiral Yammamoto.

-No attempt is made to shoehorn in a love interest. Sure, we do have an old flame of Kirk's, but she's integral to the plot and it's made very clear that it's all in the past. Absolutely no time is wasted on the two of them trying to reconnect. As with the previous point, this is an unusual virtue in a Star Trek movie.

The film has much to recommend it beyond the screenplay. The action is well-directed. The space scenes look great (give me ship models over CGI any day of the week). Leonard Nimoy just sort of radiates weird charisma.

And yeah, the overacting is fun.