Day later reaction: still love it, minor caveats.

( spoilers ahoy below the cut )

Saw the new movie on a whim today -- loved it.

The casting was fantastic, faithful to the feeling of the old canon without being overly tied to it. It made the changes they'd made really stand out. They made some big changes, and I both enjoyed the changes adn can't wait to see what comes of it.

Also, Leonard Nimoy is made of awesome.

I had a few quibbles, but right now I'm too excited about the movie to address them, so. You know. Reveling.

Alien Express (2005)

Last night, we happened upon a SciFi (SyFy?) original movie, Alien Express. It wasn't even so bad it was good; it was just so bad, it was bad.

A meteorite hits a train carrying a senator (Barry Corbin) and his staff to Las Vegas for a rally. Aliens take over the train and start killing people. Also, there's a terrorist on the train for some reason.

Lou Diamond Phillips stars as a law enforcement officer who realizes there's something wrong after the train stops (as a train would, when smacked by a meteor, I suppose.) To complicate matters, his ex-wife is on the train. Todd Bridges plays a security officer, and he and LDP try to save lives as the alien menace becomes apparent.

The set-up is just an excuse for everyone to run around on the train while being attacked by some of the most gloriously craptacular special effects on film. The aliens clearly originate from the planet Latex. Their superpower is moving really quickly. The train set is only convincing from the inside, apparently, because the effects department used a model for the exterior shots half the time, and some deeply unconvincing CGI the rest.

The dialogue was astonishing, with gems such as: "Are you sure about this?" "Way past sure!" and "I'm kicking some alien ass!" The movie did win my love when the lady on the end of the train help line expressed a further plot complication as a word problem:
"If train A is moving West at 70 miles per hour, and train B is ahead of it on the track, moving at 50 miles per hour, how long will it take until they collide?" Beautiful.

I find really bad movies compelling, in a way. We watched until the bitter end. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, unless you have the same perverse fascination with crappy cinema.