I liked this movie when it came out and still do. It's bad astronomy but it's fun and a good balance of humour, action, poignancy, and ups and downs.

Hmm... I remember the Mission Impossible 2 trailer being pretty awesome.

The trailer for the first Matrix was great, with a perfect line of dialogue for it:

"No-one can be told what the Matrix is... you have to see it for yourself"

I feel you can't really have a story about a plane potentially going down and killing everyone on board without having at least one protagonist on board, or somebody intimately connected to your protagonist on the ground - you'll remember Die Hard II put McClane's wife on board one of the planes. So the story should definitely follow somebody on the plane. And when you have one person, unless he's a single pilot locked in the cockpit, he'll need other characters to interact with.

Or maybe that's the way to go - have the story be about the pilot who's flying the plane, a plane full of highly contagious 'Captain Trips' level infected people.  He has to wrestle with the dilemma  - does he sacrifice himself and crash into the ocean, does he attempt to land the plane with the help of ground control and the kind female voice at the other end, or does he follow a mysterious third party who insists that he land at a military base? What does his more experienced 'veteran but passed over for captain too many times' chip on his shoulder co-pilot think? And what about the passengers, who are trying to get into the cabin to stop him from killing them all even though they're doomed?

So you have conflicts set up multiple ways - with himself (he has a family waiting for him), with his copilot in the cabin (an uncertain ally), with the increasingly angry crowd trying to bash their way to him (and who try to sabotage the plane any which way they can), with ground control, and with the military (who come the climax could attempt to force the plane to divert).

Following problem solvers on the ground, who are in no danger themselves, lacks dramatic punch and you have to invent some bullshit reason about why they are doing what they're doing if they don't have somebody on the plane they know. 'I lost my little brother down a well when I was 11 and now I want to save everyone I can'. Reluctant heroes, ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, are arguably more engaging protagonists, and the scientist on the ground in his lab isn't in that extraordinary situation (he's just more stressed). It's perfect for a subplot though, the race against time that we return to every few scenes to get a break from the plane itself - although I like the idea of keeping all the action on the plane. We just hear about the scientists from the military guy, is he even telling the truth? And all we have of ground control is this measured and encouraging female voice, who seems to be saying all the rights things but is just a little too good to be true. Heck, it sounds like it's an automated voice sometimes...

As a huge fan of the Outer Limits, I'd have the ending be a real punch in the guts. With the co-pilot, who's become infected as well, forcibly overcoming our younger protagonist and landing the plane at the military base with its promise of a cure. Leaving our young captain tied up, the co-pilot opens the cabin door to see that the rest of the passengers have all died. He walks over and in between their bodies, somewhat horrified since this is his fate and then opens the plane door. He looks out to see an army of fully HAZMAT equipped soldiers pointing rifles at him. They fire and he crumples backwards into the plane where he can be seen by the captain. Soldiers board the plane and as the captain watches helplessly a soldier shoots the moaning co-pilot again in the head. Soldiers walk to the cockpit, pick the captain up and take him away. Outside over the shoulder of his apparent rescuer he sees the soldiers torching the plane with flamethrowers. Wide shot of him being carrried to a large complex of white tents. Roll credits.

Ooh that would be me I think. Yeah, if memory serves, Trey said he had warned everyone about how it was a bad film to do a commentary on  (or just a bad film period ;P) and talks about how he left the room to go and do something and returned to find the others struggling through the same damn scene.

Read them all a while back. I try to re-read them every year but end up just skimming them. I always, always skip FOTR up to the Council of Elrond (but usually skip FOTR altogether).

It's not until ROTK that you start to get Crowning Moments of Awesome. Aragorn's arrival at Minas Tirith, the unfurling of his new standard above the newly arrived ships up the Anduin, is a great moment.

That said my favourite line in the entire thing is from Faramir.

“I do not love the bright sword for it's sharpness, nor the arrow for it's swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend”.

The Unfinished Tales have some great LOTR stuff as well. Isildur and the Fords of Isen are really great pieces. There's a grandeur and a hint of tragedy to much of Tolkien's work.

For a second, I was like 'they made an Alien 4?' and then I was like 'oh, so they did'.

An earlier script, which cut out all the craptastic Ripley-Newborn stuff, showed what might have been, featuring exciting chases through an hydroponic garden and a climax on Earth.

Still, the question is why? Just why?

I think there's a Geekza commentary?

Hmm... read the 'Secret History of Star Wars', that will lay to rest any doubts that Vader was never even dreamt as being Luke's father until ESB was being written.

Footloose - Kevin Bacon. Kenny Loggins' music. Need I say more?

Runner up is probably Red Dawn.

Big fan of Stargate, right from the very first movie. I liked most of the series, though once they the Orii came along the mythology of the show was getting quite burdened. However, I loved that after years of addressing the old religions they sort of tackled Christianity/Islam via proxy.

I confess Atlantis didn't do much for me - it just seemed they repeated the same formula but in another location with a different enemy.

But SGU is pretty good so far.

Great commentary, I'm so proud of you guys, you managed to mention nearly all of the great movies (and far better) movies out there, from Hero to Tai Chi Master to the 5 Venoms.

A great Karate film is Black Belt, a Japanese film from a couple of years ago.