Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan written by Gene Roddenberry, Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, although it does not make my own 1,000 favorites, indeed, it made me wonder what is so special about this motion picture, and there is worse, but more details in the lines bellow – you find a few thousand notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other pages, plus more thousands of reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan written by Gene Roddenberry, Jack B. Sowards and Harve Bennett is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made, although it does not make my own 1,000 favorites, indeed, it made me wonder what is so special about this motion picture, and there is worse, but more details in the lines bellow – you  find a few thousand notes on films from The NYT 1,000 and other pages, plus more thousands of reviews of magnum opera from The Greatest Books of All Time and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

6 out of 10

 

Alas, I have seen Star Trek The Wrath of Khan and Weekend by Jean Luc Goddard in the past few days and I am quite disillusioned, to the point where I am nearly asking what the fuck is wrong with this NYT list of the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made – yes, "De gustibus non disputandum est" but still, these are bad for this cinephile

I am not such a great fan of Science Fiction, that notwithstanding I still admire Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/09/dr-strangelove-aka-red-alert-by-peter.html I will list this as one motive to reject The Wrath of Khan, a quite modest achievement

 

Then there is the issue of special: they feel ridiculous, and yes, this is a forty-four years old motion picture, so what can we expect, we have to look at the work in the context of its period, it may have been a formidable achievement, to see those characters teleporting from one space ship to another place, when they had enough energy

I am now in the position of some of my interlocutors, The Governor from the gym downtown, who does not watch films that are – what, more than a decade old – relatively ‘old’, and I object to him that there are chefs d’oeuvre he will miss: https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/01/going-places-aka-les-valseuses-written.html

 

We do have arguments at the club downtown, one took place just a few hours ago, at the sauna, where I was talking to Titus, sophisticated man, very religious, he watched opera at home, on movies he is a fan of Tarantino, saw The Seventh Seal https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-seventh-seal-written-play-and.html

And liked it, but only looked at a little bit of Fanny and Alexander and stopped, granted, he does not have the time, he works for a major legal multinational company, from what I gather, that is one of those outfits that have lawyers in multiple lands, he mentioned Nouvelle Vague, one of the best of 2025, but not in his opinion

 

Actually, he only saw the trailer, and could establish that it does not come anywhere near Breathless – as if that was the point – and I protested that Nouvelle Vague https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/12/nouvelle-vague-by-jean-luc-godard.html is not a sequel, it is a marvelous feature

We also have the chance to watch Goddard and his crew at work, it is so amusing, Seberg wanted to leave the production, and the irony is that on her tombstone, it would be written that she was in A Bout du Souffle – I am not sure if I do not like Nouvelle Vague more than Breathless, especially after the fiasco of last night

 

The note comes up tomorrow, but Weekend seemed a horrible film, looking back, they kill some animals for the production, come to think of it, I can only hope that they did not have to film a few takes, otherwise to take more than the pig, who is hit in the head, and then the knife is used and it was clear kill for, let us say art

I did not get Blade Runner https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/07/blade-runner-1-aka-do-androids-dream-of.html speaking of Science Fiction films, 2001 A Space Odyssey has segments that are challenging, but Wrath of Khan, I do have something against this feature, and I wonder if it is more than setting expectations too high…

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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