My rating: Class A (3/7, hot white star). A strange little gem of a film, this one. It doesn’t know if it wants to be a thoughtful time travel paradox film, a love story embedded in that paradox, an action movie, or a horror film. On the other hand, it’s generally pretty successful on each of those levels, sometimes in spite of itself.
Introduction
Once upon a time a Canadian boy named James Cameron moved to California at the age of 17, saw the movie Star Wars (he would have been about 24 at the time) and decided to make movies. Largely self-taught, he became a model maker at Roger Corman‘s studio and knocked around the fringes of the movie industry in various roles until he became the special effects director for Pirhana II: The Spawning. When the producer of that film fired the director, he tapped Cameron for the job, though he subsequently fired Cameron as well. Cameron stuck with the film as an editor and special effects guru. To add insult to injury, Cameron developed food poisoning while in Rome during the editing phase of the project. Happily, while sick, Cameron had a dream featuring a robot—in some reports, the robot was sent from the future to kill him (www.amazingcameron.com) while in others, the dream consisted of a metallic torso wielding kitchen knives and dragging itself out of an explosion (The Futurist by Rebecca Winters Keegan). In any event, the idea for The Terminator was born.
Cameron and his friend Bill Wisher began to flesh out his idea, initially conceiving of two terminators, one a cyborg and the other made of liquid metal (though the second robot couldn’t be filmed using the technology at the time and so Cameron reluctantly scrapped the idea, at least until 1991’s Terminator II: Judgment Day). By the by, Cameron’s agent hated the idea and Cameron fired his agent because he had so much faith in the idea. At any rate, Cameron sold the idea and script to Gale Ann Hurd, a co-worker from the Roger Corman days, for one dollar as long as Cameron got to direct.[1] In order to secure funding for the movie, Cameron sent his friend Lance Henrikson in first dressed as a terminator, and John Daly of Hemdale Film Corporation agreed to fund the film, and Orion Pictures to distribute it.
I suppose this just goes to show that Cameron knew he had an interesting idea, and he was tenacious enough, and believed in himself enough, to push the idea until he got it done. He would have been about 24 when he saw Star Wars, and perhaps 29 when The Terminator got the go-ahead. He created an enduring science fiction franchise which is still going strong now, having spawned four movies and a television series. By some estimates, the franchise has outperformed, at least financially, the Indiana Jones franchise, which is saying something. Current ownership of the franchise appears to reside in the hands of Pacificor, a hedge fund.[2]
The Terminator itself was made for a budget of about $6.5 million, and grossed $78 million from the box office. It received largely positive critical reviews at opening, though some commentators thought it was too violent, too lurid, and too pretentious. As time passed, the movie’s detractors grew quiet and the critical and fan response grew more and more positive—Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 100% fresh rating, and Metacritic 84/100. Positive recognition by the American Film Institute followed, andThe Terminator has been selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.
Cast: Nathan Fillion, Summer Glau, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ron Glass, David Krumholtz, Michael Hitchcock
My rating: Class F (4/7, relatively hot yellow-white star). Not being a huge fan of Joss Whedon (though not particularly opposed to him, either) and never having watched the series Firefly, I was surprised at how much—at least at first glance—I liked this movie. Unfortunately, its flaws, which mostly revolve around the dialogue and some significant plot issues, show up after a little thought, though for the most part the ride is sufficiently fast and furious that it may take a little while for you to realize what’s wrong with the movie.
Introduction
So Joss Whedon is really hot right now, what with the success of The Avengers movie (already the third highest grossing film of all time) and all that. And he’s had a degree of commercial success on television (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel come to mind), where he’s also developed legions of rabid fans. Serenity is, however, based on the television series Firefly (2002), which was something of a disappointment to the Fox television network—Fox cancelled the show after airing only eleven episodes (out of a total of fourteen, one of which was the two hour pilot). In spite of strong fan response, the show never really bounced back or found another network. DVD sales, however, were strong, moving over 500,000 units in the first year alone. In 2011, The Science Channel ran all fourteen episodes in the intended order (a departure from Fox’s presentation).
Whedon reportedly really, really loved Firefly, and he was committed to bringing it back in some form. He finally managed to convince Universal Studios that he could make the film for under $40 million and do it in fifty days (instead of the normal eighty days of shooting for modern movies), and his original script came in at 190 pages, attempting to cover all of the plot points raised in the first fourteen episodes. At Universal’s direction, he cut back the plot and was successful in filming in less than eighty days.
The television series represented a fusion of space opera with the western, a concept which Whedon essentially invented. One of Whedon’s other goals was to show “regular people,” as opposed to the movers and the shakers. Put another way, the show is about the “nobodies” who “get squished by policy.” Or as Whedon stated, the show is about the kind of people that the shiny white gleaming Enterprise would pass right by….
Unfortunately for Whedon and his ensemble cast, and despite strong critical response and high anticipation, the film only opened at #2 at the box office and spent only two weeks in the top ten, ultimately grossing $25.5 million. When all was said and done, the movie almost broke even. Critical response was generally very positive, though there were exceptions.
Plot (Contains Spoilers)
Setup: Mankind has spread to the stars, or at least an extra-solar system, with some thirty planetary bodies which have been terraformed. The central planets, or the Alliance—a fusion of United States and Chinese elements—waged a war for control of the outer planetary bodies, and won. In the wake of that war, Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) of the firefly-class starship Serenity assembles a motley crew and ekes out a precarious existence trying to make enough to live on without drawing the attention, and ire, of the Alliance. As it turns out, both Reynolds and his second-in-command Zoe Alleyne Washburne (Gina Torres) fought on the side of the losers in the civil war, and are survivors of the Battle of Serenity Valley.
That’s not all that’s going on, though. Simon Tam (Sean Maher), a surgeon, is aboard and pays for his passage with medical services; he’s accompanied by his sister River (Summer Glau). Unbeknownst to any of the other members of the crew, Simon broke River, a powerful psychic, out of a secret Alliance facility where she was conditioned to fight and to serve the Alliance. And not even Simon and River know that the Alliance has sent an Operative, a man with no name and no recorded history, to recover her. Simon intends to safeguard his sister at all costs, but Mal insists that the sister—he’s aware of her psychic gifts as a “reader,” will come in handy on what amounts to a corporate payroll snatch. Simon opposes this use of his sister, but is helpless to stop it.
Short summary: I’m going to be rather careful here, so you’ll get a few spoilers—but not many, as the central mysteries of the film (the Reavers and River Tam) tie together in an unexpected manner. Instead, I’ll point out that Mal’s raid, intended to capture a corporate payroll, is disrupted by the approach of the dreaded Reavers. River senses their approach, and our plucky heroes flee the scene. Of course the Reavers chase them, and of course they successfully evade the Reavers, but the conflict between Mal and Simon comes to a head and Simon declares that he will take his sister off Serenity after she’s gotten her share of the bounty for the raid.
Unfortunately, things don’t quite work out as intended. When Mal and Jayne Cobb (Adam Baldwin) go to get the bounty, something strange happens to River: upon viewing a television commercial, she goes blank-faced, and then attacks every individual in the room. She injures and kills everyone in sight in a surprising balletic dance of death, including injuring Jayne severely, and is stopped from shooting Mal only by her brother’s appearance. Speaking the “safe words” taught him by the people who helped him infiltrate the facility where River was held and conditioned, he forces her into sleep.
As a result, River and Simon wind up staying on the ship, and the quest to find out what’s going on winds up involving the entire crew.
Impressions
The visual effects in Serenity are pretty impressive, and become more impressive when you realize that Whedon did them all on a budget. The movie lacks traditional space battles, instead focusing on human-scale violence (for the most part), but even so, Whedon achieved an incredible look and feel for the movie especially given how little money he had to work with. CGI, for example, was right out in that early chase scene in which the Reavers, in a hovercraft-style vehicle which might have been spaceworthy, chase the crew of the Serenity who are on a “mule,” some kind of hovercraft which serves them for hauling goods and people about. That scene was accomplished by putting a dummy mule vehicle on a crane arm, which they then filmed driving down Templin Highway in California.
No matter how you slice it, though, the look and feel of Serenity is nothing short of amazing, and the special effects are wonderful.
The music, scored by David Newman (he has a rather famous cousin named Randy) and performed by the Hollywood Studio Symphony, is pretty good. It is evocative of Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kidd, and Rodeo, quintessentially American symphonic music which captures a pioneer spirit and the vast scale of space while remaining warmly human. The music, I’m told, is not as quirky as that of the series, and it also tracks modern cinema’s bombastic action cues, but it also features an eclectic mix of of acoustic guitar, banjo, flute, percussion, and full symphony orchestra. All in all, Serenity is backed by an effective score.
The perfomances are, by and large, at least adequate, and in some cases considerably more than that. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres and Adam Baldwin all shine in their respective roles as Mal, Zoe and Jayne, people capable of considerable violence—although they are all, also, people with more going on upstairs than they are inclined to let on. Sean Maher’s Simon Tam is a very different kind of character, but he convincingly displays a touching naivete and an abiding and overriding love for his sister and is one of the movie’s standouts. Every actor, it seems, gets their chance to lift the bushel and show off their light just a little bit, and it’s always in a way that’s consistent with the characters. Jewel Staite’s Kaylee Frye gets some wonderfully angry moments, while Alan Tudyk’s Wash Washburne displays competence as a pilot and glee at the idea that a little girl beat up one of his macho crewmates. Morena Baccarin’s Inara Serra shows her moral fiber and is one of the only people aboard who dares to criticize Mal. Summer Glau, in some ways, has less to work with than the others in spite of her character’s ferocity and psychic power, but she gets in a good line or two and is the character around which all the others move. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance as the Operative, as he is—unlike the crew and passengers of the Serenity—a serene man who genuinely believes in what he’s doing, which is to hunt down and kill River Tam before she can do harm to the Alliance. Two other names, by the way, stand out—actors Sarah Paulson and Tamara Taylor. Both have small roles but absolutely dominate the screen during their performances, and are actors I always seem to notice.
Structurally, there’s something wrong with the plot and the pacing, though I’m having a hard time putting my finger on it. Ultimately, the movie feels like two episodes of a television show, each an hour or so long. In addition, the mystery of River Tam, and what she might know, is all so ambiguous and nebulous a motive for the rest of the characters that it feels somehow forced. Don’t get me wrong—there’s a good story there, and Whedon’s meticulous plot construction feeds that mystery, along with vital clues, at every step of the way. Still, somehow the development feels episodic rather than flowing to a natural conclusion.
There is a major plothole, too, though the explanation for it requires a look at the plot itself…
———– BEGIN SPOILERS ———-
What happened on Miranda, which was nothing less than the death of an entire planet full of people, and within the last ten years or so, was covered up by the highest officials in the Alliance. I find it difficult to believe that an entire planet full of people could die with so little notice that our characters have trouble even remembering that Miranda was a planet. Add to that that the mysterious Reavers hang out near Miranda, and every conspiracy theorist in the universe, never mind investigative journalists and government watchgroups, would begin to ask some tough questions. To put it another way, the revelation of the central mystery—that the government accidentally killed an entire planet full of people and created a group of subhuman raiders who eat people alive, which group now threatens the other planets near Miranda—depends on a frankly incredible and unbelievable fact: that no one realizes that something went wrong on Miranda that was abnormal. Most people don’t even remember Miranda at all.
Willing suspension of disbelief can only go so far, Mr. Whedon, and I’m afraid that here you’ve pushed past that particular boundary.
———- END SPOILERS ———-
Another problem with Serenity is the somewhat sophomoric creation of tension. In one scene, Simon asks his sister if she’s okay with leaving Serenity and the crew behind—he’s worried, but wants to keep his sister happy, too. She replies that “it isn’t safe,” and he turns away. After at least a full second, and long after Simon has turned and cannot hear her, she continues “…for them.” That’s the kind of overly theatrical touch that always bothers me. The only reason to put something like that into a scene is to convey information directly to the audience without showing it to the characters, and for some reason that always bothers me.
One other thing about Serenity bothers me to no end, and that’s Whedon’s trademark “witty dialogue.” It’s supposed to be funny and flip, but to me, it undercuts the seriousness of the story. It is probably significant that as the movie progresses, and more and more information comes to light, fewer and fewer jokes get cracked. Still, consider the opening sequence of the film, in which the following occurs:
Wash: This landing is going to get pretty interesting.
Mal: Define interesting.
Wash: Oh God, oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die?
Mal (over the ship’s intercom): This is the captain. We have a little problem with our entry sequence…so we may experience some slight turbulence and then explode.
Seconds later, after Mal has left the cockpit…
Jayne: We’re gonna explode? I don’t wanna explode…
If that’s your idea of snappy, witty and comic dialog, then Serenity is your kind of movie. If it’s not…well, either have a high tolerance for it, or watch something else.
Wrap-up
Am I sorry I watched Serenity? Absolutely not. It’s a flawed movie, certainly, but it’s visually stimulating, well scored and rather well acted, and it keeps moving at a breakneck pace almost as soon as the exposition is done. In fact, it moves so fast and so smoothly that the movie’s flaws weren’t evident to me at first blush. That’s something of a compliment, by the way. Whedon plays absolutely fair, too, giving the viewer all the clues available to his characters (and then some, actually), to the horrific secret underlying (and driving) the story. I suspect that to fans of the television series, the completion of the main character arcs is also deeply satisfying.
Fortunately for me, the witty banter ends before it becomes too cloying, and the speed of events really hides the few plot holes and poorly conceived scenes. Don’t get me wrong—this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad movie, and it’s a great deal of fun. If you can contrive to catch it, it’s worth a look.
My rating: Class B (2/7, a very hot blue-white star). Really, I suppose I’m being a bit of a jerk in giving this only a Class B, since it is one of the true classics of the genre with an enduring influence, amazing look and feel, unique music, and some stellar performances. There are a few poor acting jobs, though, and the effects are somewhat dated now, but other than that, this is THE movie that put science fiction in the movies.
Introduction
With characters, a setting and some plot elements that hearken to the Bard‘s The Tempest, a science fiction movie had better have a thoughtful and intriguing storyline and some strong performers, or it’s going to be a disaster. Fortunately, The Forbidden Planet has a thoughtful storyline, with some action and danger, as well as romance and comedy, thrown into the mix. Some of the performances are stellar, and even the weak ones are still fun.
The movie brought a lot of firsts to the screen: the first science fiction film by MGM, the first science fiction film set off Earth, the first movie with humans traveling in their own starship, the first movie with an electronic score, and the first appearance of Robbie the Robot (who would go on to appear in movies and television into the first decade of the 21st century).
The Forbidden Planet was a commercial success, earning about $23.5 million on a budget of just under $5 million; it ran from April to September of 1956 in Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Subsequently the film has been lionized by critics and gained a substantial following. It also had a tremendous influence on later science fiction, informing television’s Star Trek in several ways (Gene Rodenberry stated that the film was one of his inspirations for the series), showing up as an episode of Dr. Who, and giving The Great Machine to television’s Babylon 5 (while the show’s creators were not conscious of the parallel, the special effects crew who created the visuals were).
Plot
Setup: Earth Cruiser C57-D is on a mission to Altair IV to discover what happened to the crew of the Bellerophon which was to make landfall there. After thirteen months in transit through space, they transit to speeds below that of light and begin to look for the thriving colony they hope to find. It isn’t there, but the sole survivor of the Bellerophon, Dr. Morbius, radios them and warns them to stay away from Altair IV or he cannot be responsible for the consequences. But orders are orders, and so the cruiser sets down some distance from Morbius’ home. They haven’t been down long when a ground car driven by Robby the Robot arrives and offers to take three of the crew to Morbius. Once in his home, Morbius tells them that he’s the last survivor of the Bellerophon, the crew of which was killed off by some mysterious “planetary force” which vaporized the Bellerophon when the survivors tried to escape. He also unwillingly introduces his daughter Altaira to the men. She is fascinated by them, and they by her, while Morbius warns the men that he is afraid of what will happen now that people not immune to the planetary force are on Altair IV. And the stage is set!
Short summary: Morbius is a philologist, a scientist who studies languages, and what makes Altair IV interesting to him is that it was the home of the Krell, a race of god-like creatures who were intellectually and morally superior to mankind. In a single night, however, the Krell race was mysteriously destroyed, and Morbius studies their remaining technology in order to figure out how it works. He reveals this information only grudgingly, and after the Earth cruiser is sabotaged in some unknown manner—perhaps indicating that the mysterious planetary force is once again stirring. In the meantime, Altaira is fascinated by, and exerts considerable fascination over, the crew of the cruiser.
And that, my friends, is all you’re going to get. If you haven’t seen it, the story is sufficiently interesting, and the plot’s development depends on surprise, that you really do need to see it. And of course if you have seen it you don’t need the summary!
Impressions
The production history of the movie begins with a script for Fatal Planet, a science fiction B movie aimed at children and written by Irving Block and Allen Adler. Somehow, Block and Adler wound up pitching the film to MGM, a decidedly non-B-movie studio. MGM elected to film the movie at a budget of $1 million dollars, a relatively small budget, but something strange happened along the way: MGM brought in the novelist and screenwriter Cyril Hume (a descendant of the philosopher David Hume who gained fame by writing Tarzan scripts) to rewrite the script, and somehow the movie acquired gravitas and depth. MGM doubled the budget when they realized that they had a potential hit on their hands. Still, MGM was uneasy about the film, particularly its electronic score, and so they sneak previewed the movie to test audiences before the editing was even finished. Audience response was so positive that MGM decided to release the film as it was—so in a sense the movie that made it into theaters was an unfinished one. That roughness shows in some places….
This movie is in color, so it represents something of a departure for 1950s science fiction. It must have been a big budget film in its time—the $5 million it took to make it in 1956 would be about $40 million in 2010 dollars. That money shows in a lot of ways; Robby the Robot was a $125,000 investment in a single prop, for example. But the movie makes good use of all that money in creating vistas of an alien planet, a futuristic home, and the still-functioning remnants of a high-technology civilization, including labs and power stations. The entire movie was shot indoors on sets at MGM’s Culver City location, with exterior shots simulated by some of the best matte paintings of the time.
One of the key visual effects is the monster—you can’t have a science fiction story called The Forbidden Planet without a monster, now can you? The monster was created with animation, using the work of Joshua Meador, an accomplished animator from Disney Studios. The fact that the monster is animated is all too obvious, but then it’s not a material being, which is clear almost from the outset. To modern eyes, the effect is not wholly successful, but it is pretty good…. It helps, of course, that the animated monster moves quickly and is seldom on the screen for too long—though details such as the monster’s goatee (an important visual clue as to what’s really going on on Altair IV) slip past on a first viewing as a result.
The music, while ambitious and interesting, is not wholly successful—though it is one of the most eerie soundtracks I’ve ever heard. The first electronic music soundtrack in movie history, it is definitely unique. Electronic music pioneers Francis and Bebe Barron put together the film’s “electronic tonalities” to create a unique, and historically unusual, soundtrack for the film. Their score preceded the invention of the synthesizer by some eight years, and used unique electronic circuits for each sound—circuits which would often burn out during the process of sound generation, making the actual sounds difficult if not impossible to reproduce exactly. Additional effects such as reverberation, delays, reversals and speed changes were added to the taped sounds.
In the sleeve to the film’s soundtrack, the Barrons stated that
We design and construct electronic circuits which function electronically in a manner remarkably similar to the way that lower life-forms function psychologically. In scoring Forbidden Planet—as in all of our work—we created individual cybernetics circuits for particular themes and leit motifs, rather than using standard sound generators. Actually, each circuit has a characteristic activity pattern as well as a “voice”. We were delighted to hear people tell us that the tonalities in The Forbidden Planet remind them of what their dreams sound like.
It has been reported that during the preview of the film, when the Earth cruiser lands on Altair, the audience broke out into spontaneous applause due to the film’s electronic music. Since the Barrons were not members of the Musician’s Guild, their work could not be considered for an Academy Award in either the soundtrack or sound effects categories, and that is why they were credited with the film’s “electronic tonalities.”
There are three major characters in the film: Leslie Nielson’s Commander John J. Adams, Anne Francis’ Altaira “Alta” Morbius, and Walter Pidgeon’s Dr. Edward Morbius. Nielson turns in a relatively understated performance, a military man who is going to do his job no matter what. He’s also protective of not just his men but all the people around him, and he resists his growing feelings for Altaira until they overwhelm him. It is a strong performance, and Nielson’s chops as a leading man are much in evidence. Francis, in the meantime, portrays the seventeen year old Alta with a believable naivete as she meets men to whom she is not related, and growing confidence as she steps out from her father’s forbidding shadow. Francis’ performance is the lynchpin of the film’s plotline, and she really excelled in the role’s comic, romantic and dramatic elements. Finally, Pidgeon does a solid job. His character must provide the relatively soulless exposition necessary to the film’s story, and his character echoes the intellectual precision and emotionlessness of the Krell he idolizes. The character is also arrogant and willful, and these qualities come through in spades. It is important that the character’s repressed emotions break free, however, during the development of the plotline, and it is here that Pidgeon is not wholly successful. There is a certain stiffness to his emotional outbursts, almost as if they were choreographed rather than natural, and that stiffness robs the film of some of its emotional punch. On the other hand, the repressed Morbius is an intellectual, rather than emotional, intelligence, and perhaps Pidgeon’s performance is intended to evoke those characteristics.
Some of the other performances are well worth noting. Robby the Robot was operated by Frankie Darro, and his voice was provided by Marvin Miller—though the film does not specifically credit the actor. Miller’s stentorian, deep-voiced tones convey a dry wit, and Robby, the analog of The Tempest‘s Ariel, has a definite personality which comes through loud and clear. Isaac Asimov’s laws of robotics, as well as the name Robby, also inform the robot’s character—and the former is a significant element of the plot. Two secondary characters—Warren Stevens’ Lieutenant “Doc” Ostrow and Jack Kelly’s Lieutenant Jerry Farman—are of considerable importance to the film, and the actors give strong performances. Kelly, in particular, gives an appropriately smarmy and sneaky tone to the Farman character, though Farman is also redeemed before his arc is finished. Stevens does a strong job, even delivering the line “Monsters from the id!” with considerable aplomb.
One performance in particular hits a sour note: Earl Holliman’s “Cookie.” The role is intended to provide comic relief, and it does, but Holliman’s performance is forced rather than natural. Another actor, Richard Anderson (he plays Chief Quinn), is primarily of note because he later played Oscar Goldwin in television’s The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman—though his performance is certainly good enough in this film.
The plot line is not strictly derivative of The Tempest. Instead, the fallen civilization of the Krell is without parallel in cinematic history. The mystery of their technology, and the relationship between that technology and the Krell’s destruction and the “planetary force” which destroyed the Bellerophon and its crew, is central to the film and one of the more imaginative and well-conceived science fiction plot lines. In addition, psychology and mankind’s essential nature play as much of a role in the plot as do science.
Thematically the film upends and updates its progenitor The Tempest, with alien super-science substituting for The Tempest‘s magic. The Tempest’s self-aware self-references to the magic and illusion of the theater itself perhaps hide the idea that Prospero uses a rational and academic sorcery (contrasted to the evil of Sycorax’s black magic) to good ends and effect—an idea which would have been taken quite seriously in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when witches were still burned at the stake and alchemists still worked to find the philosopher’s stone. In the place of magic, however, The Forbidden Planet offers us the super-science of the Krell, a race of god-like rational beings who were intellectually and morally one million years in advance of humanity. And that super-science, combined with the essentially animal nature of mankind (and before us, the Krell themselves) wreaks destruction and tragedy.
The anti-science, anti-scientist theme of the film could have been (at least in part) a reaction to the development and public announcement of the first hydrogen bomb in 1953. Between the horrors of nuclear warfare and the beginning of the Cold War, the idea that science—and by extension, passionless scientists who failed to see the full implications of their work—could destroy humanity must have been a chilling, and relatively new, idea. That idea informs The Forbidden Planet in no small way. Set against the ideals of science, the film instead offers a warmly human relationship between Alta and Commander Adams, a relationship that is directly threated by the super-science of the Krell as wielded, albeit unknowingly, by Morbius.
Wrap-up
The Forbidden Planet is a truely classic film, of interest not only to science fiction fans but also to fans of cinema. It proved to be hugely influential, and was one of the first science fiction film which had real depth and story to it, along with a compelling scientific mystery the secret of which was integral to the plot. It is well worth watching in its own right, however, because it is tremendously entertaining on several levels. Add to that some interesting scientific speculations, as well as ground-breaking music and interesting philosophical underpinnings, and you have a movie which is simply fantastic. Do yourself a favor—the next time it comes on TNT, sit down and watch it.
* No, I don’t often read Conservapedia, being rather more liberal personally, but I often find opposing viewpoints interesting and worth looking into. In addition, this is a fine, if somewhat limited, analysis of the movie with a unique viewpoint. Jump back to the blog.
For easy access to film entries not displayed, you might check out The Top Fifty Films List, which contains links to every review in the Top Fifty Films. Detours and Unexpected Gems contains the random trips off the map...
Coming up:
Just up: We've had something of a hiatus here, largely mediated by a combination of a death in the family and watching the various Star Wars films. I find that I'm struggling to say anything about the Star Wars films that hasn't already been said....
Fortunately, this past weekend we watched Aliens, and I do have something say about that! Expect to see the review before Friday, September 28.
STILL Pending: the television series Quark. I'm having trouble bringing myself to review it, though at least it would give some closure to a negative experience.
1984
top50sf 