Have you tried playing it in your computer's dvd-drive, if it has one?

Right, forgot it was a blu-ray disc. I suppose some PCs have Blu-ray players. Not my cheapie, though.

Rental discs (Netflix, library, redbox, etc) are scratched & dinged as often as not.  People don't treat them well because they don't wn them.  Get a CD/DVD sleaning solution handy if you're regularly renting discs.

Well, I think I was still projecting how she looked in the original series onto that scene in Star Trek V, if I'm honest. I wasn't interested in her in the rest of the film...just when she had her clothes off! Certainly I wasn't attracted to women of that age as a rule when I was 15 or so. Thinking back, celebs that did it for me back then would include the likes of Madonna, Belinda Carlisle and Kim Basinger.

We've reached a point in our history where we are pretty sure earth holds no surprises. Sure, there are some people who believe in some creature in Loch Ness. And it's true not all the deepest depths of the ocean have been explored. But we're pretty sure there are few surprises left. No missing links, no wonders, no living dinosaurs. But it wasn't all that long ago that there seemed to be room for mystery. There were still jungles not fully explored (or exploited). And plenty of ocean left to explore. With perhaps uncharted islands.

There seemed at least a possibility for wonders not yet found. It is this world explored by Arthur Conan Doyle and Jules Verne. Telling stories that begin with what we know, and take us to what we don't.

87. The Lost World (Hoyt and Menasco, 1925)

Willis O'Brien employed stop-motion animation to bring dinosaurs to life in a feature-length film for the first time. Based on Arthur Conan Doyle's classic novel, a scientist seeks to prove that dinosaurs still live, hidden deep in a jungle in South America. This film for the first time captures the wonder and ferocity of what it is like to behold a dinosaur. And what the consequenes would be if one were set loose in a major city like London...

This movie would see several remakes of varying quality, in films and TV series. And would serve as the inspiration for many films, including a few still to come on this list.

86. King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack,1933)

Rehashing many of the ideas of the Lost World, except with a much higher production value, evident in the editing, the cast, the narrative and the special effects. O'Brien is given the chance to hone his animation techniques and return to a world where dinosaurs still live, this time on an unknown island. On this island is a wall built long ago. A wall which keeps the dinosaurs on the other side.

And not only the dinosaurs, but also a large primate named Kong. Who rules this lost world.

In The Lost World, the goal was science, which means the motives were a mix of truth and ego.

Here the motive is commerce. It is the story of a filmmaker. One might say the motive is art, but the goals of Carl Denham here are never shown as so noble. He wants to make money and is willing to sacrifice human life to make it. And he is willing to bring lot a mighty creature, turn a king into a captive, an object of amusement.

85. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Paton, 1916)

Filmed partially underwater using new camera techniques, this is the first major adaptation of Vernes's novel and combines plot elements with The Mysterious Island.

Jules Verne is one of the fathers of science fiction. And his interest was very much the science. The novel 20000 Leagues reads as much like an oceanography textbook as a novel. His details for the submarine were grounded in reality, enough to inspire future engineers to build our modern submarines. And where known science ran out, he used imagination.

This film presents a curtailed version of the novel, not reaching all the great sights, but it keeps to the powerful theme of the book, found in the character of Nemo. An anarchist fable of a man who rejects civilization and all its governments and forsakes the world. He claims independence from all such bodies, residing in the ocean, which he sees as his domain.

Both 20,000 Leages and Mysterious Island would be adapted again in the future.

84. Creature from the Black Lagoon (Arnold, 1954)

Deep in the amazon jungle is a creature unlike anything ever seen.

The movie begins with the dawn of the universe and takes us to the formation of the earth, its cooling, and finally to the evolution of life.

What I like about a lot of sci/fi movies of this era is the time spent letting scientists be scientists. Before undertaking the expedition, there is always something to study. See also for example Journey to the Center of the Earth. Here they study is accompanied by rousing speeches about the importance of science and discovery, the purity of knowledge, the necessity of understanding evolution in order to help guide our own, and introspection on just how much is out there to understand.

This is contrasted with a scientist more concerned with trophies and money. It is hard to tell if he is pragmatic--they do need money to fund their work--or merely greedy.

And when they encounter the creature, these arguments take on an urgency? To kill or to study? To bring it back to civilization or escape with their lives?

The cast includes one woman, with a bit of a token leading lady feel. But it is worth noting--and this is true in much science fiction of this time--that the woman is a scientist, a full member of the expedition, insistently braving the dangers. This is more progressive than I associate with 1950's America.

Same here. I've got in on DVD, even.