Primer

Sub-micro budget indie has many technical flaws and is probably a teeth-grinding chore for those impatient with low budget impedimenta (uneven sound, undressed sets, amateur composition, etc.). I was intrigued by the realistic approach to the what if ... In this case, time travel. Unsurprisingly, it is confusing immediately and never ceases to be a muddle but the impression that a puzzle is being worked out is entertainment enough. Many pitfalls were avoided including excessive philosophizing. There is a lot of talk and much of it is simply audio filler but it eventually adds up to being pretty OK.

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

Superior doomsday movie. I thought it was going to be cheesy (see title) but I was completely mistaken. Leo McKern is great as always. Janet Munro dominates all her scenes with her energy, although Edward Judd keeps his head above water most of the time. He struck me a par-boiled substitute for Richard Burton. Interesting commentary with Val Guest.

The Invisible Ray

Mad scientists probe too far ... and so forth. Great sets, eccentric performances by everyone and a couple of unexpected turns. The connection between this and Kiss Me Deadly is pretty clear.

Doomwatch

Cheesy, well-intentioned poppycock about maritime pollution. Starts off, teasingly, as a horror story and then decides that it's an eco-thriller but minus the thrills and degrades into a pretty sad cautionary tale. Ian Bannen always interesting to watch although he seems a bit off his game here. George Sanders appears just long enough to be huffy, then confused.

WALL-E

As everyone on the planet has already seen the movie, I will just re-assert the consensus that WALL-E is really good. That Pixar can evoke a wide range of emotion from a couple of ovals (EVE) is a worthy feat.
Anti-fatism activists (Antifatismistas?) might take exception but I suspect that they take everything personally already.

Red Planet Mars

Peter Graves builds a radio to talk to Mars but accidentally breaks in on a party line with God. Clumsy anti-commie propaganda that would make even Ronald Reagan blush. Was this somehow inspired, in a sideways fashion, by Ray Bradbury's Christus Apollo?

The Man From Earth

Jerome Bixby script realized by ensemble populated with Star Trek graduates is not quite just a rehash of Requiem for Methuselah. Doesn't escape its TV genesis.

Dune (extended version, aka TV version)

David Lynch, understandably, had his director credit removed from this messier version of his colossal mess. It's an entertaining mess, but is more like an artifact than a movie. Brad Dourif, lord of the twitch, manges to seem out of place in a universe of genetically twitchy characters. Odd. There are a few scenes of interest but most of the extended running time is to shoehorn in an attempt to provide enough back story so that a lay person can have a chance to understand what is going on. I think the exposition just adds more incomprehensible words and behaviors and so just makes the confusion worse. Although the score is unremarkable, it sometimes rises to the level of not annoying but there are a couple of sequences where the Toto-ness of the source is all too apparent.

The Phantom Menace

Much has been written of the prodigious failings of the fourth, first, whichever Star Wars movie. But it's not all Jar Jar and midifloradorians. A list in roughly chronological order:
❦ Overall design is attractive
❦ Ewan is a jaunty young Obi Wan
❦ Liam makes for a redoubtable Jedi knight
❦ Melting the blast door was actually really good - shades of Forbidden Planet
❦ Various droids and their equipment are cool
❦ Monsters of the deep are always welcome although the pacing of the planet core sequence is clunky. (Oops! Look on the bright side!)
❦ Jar Jar excepted (excepted with extreme prejudice), the Gungans are perfectly typical Star Wars aliens
❦ Astromech droid garage. Recalls Huey Dewey, and Louis from Silent Running.
❦ Natalie Portman!
❦ Watto's doorbell
❦ Darth Maul's makeup, Darth Maul in general
❦ Pod race arena quoting Ben-Hur
❦ Darth Maul's speeder bike
❦ Terence Stamp!
❦ Samuel Jackson!
❦ Dinosaurs and force-fields: go great together.
❦ Pistol packing Princess Padme
❦ The Duel of the Fates. The best lightsaber fight ever.

Prized Possession

Friend from the time before time rendered this for me just after the iron core of this planet settled but before the oceans had yet condensed. So, pretty old. I love it. It has been in every place that I have lived.

The First Man Into Space

I was totally sucked in by the cover art by the Criterion Collection but in spite of having the usual low-budget woes, this was really fun. The monster is really icky. If the production had allowed for any kind of decent lighting, photography, etc, it would also have been scary. Body count is pretty high, especially among female innocent bystanders. This really is more of a Twilight Zone episode than a feature. Ridiculous attempt to prolong "mystery" of the identity of the monster leads to most of the groans although everybody keeps an admirably straight face, not that there aren't some thespian quality control problems. The artwork on the re-issue is the best part, but purely on account of extreme awesomeness.

P.S. If I had seen this movie as a kid, my Major Matt Mason toys would have suffered.

It Came From Outer Space Trailer

Amusing trailer for It Came From Outer Space

It Came From Outer Space

It's actually pretty good! I'd only seen the patently lame alien puppet and assumed that it was typical of the production. That was a mistake. I will keep a look out for the 3-D version.

The Fantastic Four

Not half as bad as I had expected it to be. Mr. Fantastic's effects, although the best to date, are still implausible looking. Not that it was any different in the comic. Ioan Gruffudd is not quite Ivy League enough to be Reed Richards although the Torch and the Thing were perfectly fine. But what to say of the fourth FF? FFS, that's what. Jessica Alba has a lot of vim, but vim will not carry the scene. Dr. Doom was watered down in the effort to make him relevant to the concerns of today or some such chicanery but he failed his super-villain entrance exam. "Your armor must be this cool to be admitted to the super-villain lounge."

Conquest of Space

Muddled follow up to Destination Moon does not do justice to source material by Chesley Bonestell, Willy Ley and Werner von Braun. Journeyman effort from everyone smooths over some of the weak elements. Benson Fong pulls off a truly bizarre speech about how WWII was caused by an insufficiency of cutlery. William Hopper appears as a prototype version of Haywood Floyd. One detail I haven't seen mentioned in reviews is that one of the characters is rendered into a fine pink mist inside his suit. Eww.