Say what you want about "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," but please make sure you have seen the Director's Edition first. The original cut, released to cinemas in 1979, wasn't completely "realized" due to time and budget constraints. And it showed. I remember leaving the cinema on opening night thinking, That was pretty good, just not amazing. Flash forward 22 years to 2001: Watching the movie again on the big screen at the premiere of the Director's Edition I thought, Now that's more like it!

Long, yes, but no longer than, say, "Dances With Wolves" or some other big screen epics. And length should never matter when it comes to movies, as long as the audience is enjoying the end result. The difference here between a movie like "Dances With Wolves" and its four-hour Director's Edition is that director Robert Wise and his team of producers, David Fein and Michael Matessino, have given us, herewith, Exhibit A in the "less is more" category. The movie isn't so much longer, as it is simply better.

As ever, the extras offer some great background and fun stuff too: original TV commercials, deleted scenes, and, of course, the documentaries. In this case they are fascinating because this movie really had three lives: the original theatrical version, the 1983 television extended version and now this, the final and greatest version. [Tim]