First Man

Dir: Damien Chazelle

2018

****

First Man is a good reference when looking how trends and opinions have changed in a relatively short amont of time. Based on First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, the project was originally announced in 2003, with Clint Eastwood slated to direct. For what ever reason this rendition fell though and director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash, La la Land) and writer Josh Singer (Spotlight, The Post) were hired, changing the style and approach of the film. It’s great, but not exactly what you’d expect from a film executively produced by Steven Spielberg. I can only imagine what the patriotic melodrama Eastwood would have made of the whole thing would have looked like but I’m so glad film makers have now taken us away from that sort of thing and made films like this as they should be made. First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong is about Neil A. Armstrong and so is the film. It isn’t weighted down by country, duty and any ridiculous notion of Armstrong being heroic or special. He was a fascinating man with lots of positives and lots of flaws, we only really know him for being the first man on the moon, but what about everything else? How did he get to that position? What drove him? What on earth was going through his mind? That’s the great thing about this rather original space movie, it really does delve into the mindset of the man without relying on moody silence and handsome glares (even though Ryan Gosling is the king of moody silence and handsome glares). It feels like a million miles away from what you’d expect from a Damien Chazelle movie – for starters there’s no music – but he manages the same trick he uses in his all singing all dancing numbers here, in the stillness of reality. It’s all about the balance. His film doesn’t rely on 50s and 60s set-pieces and flat-top haircuts. He shows how life then isn’t that different from life now, so we’re not watching these events happening to someone we feel disconnected from because they’re from another era. The clothes and cars are different (not as good) but people were the same. Armstrong is of course a historical figure but before that he was just a man. It is impossible to put one mans life – or even the thoughts and feeling one man has in one week – into a 90 minute film, but Singer manages to explore Armstrong’s mindset as well as the key events that led to Apollo 11’s mission to the moon in 1969. I’m a bit of a space nerd. But there was plenty here that I was unaware of. It covers the time Armstrong spent as a NASA test pilot flying the X-15 rocket plane and the time he inadvertently bounced off the atmosphere, almost loosing control landing safely. It’s an exiting scene, but I had no idea that his colleagues expressed concern that his recent record of mishaps was due to distraction and that he was grounded for a period of time. I was unaware that his two-year old daughter died of a brain tumour, or that he had researched tirelessly to find possible treatments. He applied to be part of Project Gemini and was accepted to NASA Astronaut Group 2 when he was still shaken with grief but he never let his feelings be known to anyone. It explores how Armstrong befriended Elliot See and Ed White and how the space race developed in its later years. To properly realise the fear and tension that the astronauts were going through, the story explores the T-38 crash that killed Elliot See and Charles Bassett, the spinning incident when Gemini 8 docked with the Agena target vehicle and when the Apollo 1 crew are killed in a fire during a test launch. Armstrong also had to eject from an aircraft that nearly killed him the following year, shortly before being selected to command Apollo 11. We’ve seen the emotion involved in such events before in pretty much ever fictional and non-fiction film about space travel but never has it been so muted and so real. The truth is Armstrong never let his emotion out, which begs the question: Was he the best man for the job because of it or was he a liability? The film asks in a respectful manner, his sons Mark and Rick said that First Man was the most accurate portrayal of their father and their mother they could have hoped for, which is good enough for me. They even found the blue-prints for the Armstrong house and rebuilt it for the film. The detail is superb, with the special effects working brilliantly from a different angle. There is no CGI used during the film and no green screen. The lunar surface was recreated by building a set on the Vulcan quarry in Atlanta and the pods the astronauts sat in were built to scale using original plans. LED displays of up to 10 meters were used for the shuttle scenes. These projected images that would simulate the exterior of the spacecraft, both the earth and space. Next to the screens, several simulators were built, each corresponding to a spacecraft. These were programmed to move synchronized with the images of the spherical LED screens that could be seen through the windows. Chazelle chose this technique because it allowed the actors to get more into the role; instead of seeing a green screen, they saw the outside environment recreated with visual effects. It’s a level of detail that doesn’t go unnoticed and I would imagine if you were an actor you’d want to be in a Chazelle film for the sheer experience. I thought it was a brilliant drama with such impressive detail that it did Armstrong and his memory justice. It’s truly revolutionary in its realism, although I didn’t think Buzz Aldrin came off particularly well but maybe it was accurate. I met Buzz once and had my photo taken with him, I wish this film had been made before then so I could have asked him about it (not that I didn’t have anything else to ask him about). The film didn’t do as well as had hoped, which is a little puzzling. Maybe people feared it would be a musical in space, maybe it wasn’t actiony enough. I like to think it wasn’t the fact that Florida Senator Marco Rubio described the omission of the moment Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag as "total lunacy" that did it. You can clearly see the American flag on the moon, just not the moment it was put in the ground. Donald Trump soon threw in his overblown opinion and said "It's almost like they're embarrassed at the achievement coming from America, I think it's a terrible thing. When you think of Neil Armstrong and when you think of the landing on the moon, you think about the American flag. For that reason, I wouldn't even want to watch the movie." This comment says it all really. If you are interested in a detailed and intelligent retelling of the Apollo 11 mission, the events leading to it and the first man on the moon, then you’ll enjoy the film, but if you are a knuckle-dragging moron who simply wants action and thinks the flag is really the first thing that comes into peoples minds when they think of the moon, then don’t bother. I suspect it was the scene involving the protests aimed at NASA, the space race and the money being spent on it when poverty was rife, the civil rights movement was struggling and America were involved in a pointless war. The song "Whitey on the Moon" during the protest sequence is a cover of the famous song by singer/poet Gil Scott-Heron. It stands as a critique of the economic priorities of the Space Race for many of the economically and social disenfranchised at the time. It wasn’t a political statement by Chazelle, just another detailed look at history, one that some people still find hard to accept.

Lifeforce

Dir: Tobe Hooper

1985

*****

If anyone tries to tell you that Lifeforce is a bad film ignore them, it is quite the opposite. It could be down to the fact that it is one of Cannon’s infamous flops that makes people believe in this vicious rumour but then it is also one of the reasons why Cannon became such a cult studio with a huge legion of fans. Director Tobe Hooper once said of working for Golan-Globus "Cannon was really a good company to work for...both Yoram (Globus) and Menahem (Golan) loved the movies and the filmmakers, and really treated them well. It seemed more, when I was there, like maybe what the old system was like. I miss that kind of showmanship and risk-taking." Hooper almost lost one of his ears during the shooting of a scene on the freezing cold English moors. Based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel The Space Vampires, Lifeforce is both bizarre and amazing. After its release, Colin Wilson recalled that author John Fowles regarded the film adaptation of his own novel The Magus in 1968, as the worst film adaptation of a novel ever. Wilson told Fowles there was now a worse one, the film adaptation of his "Lifeforce". He was wrong of course as the film blows his novel out of the sky. It begins when the crew of the space shuttle Churchill finds a 150-mile-long spaceship hidden in the coma of Halley's Comet. Inside, the crew discovers hundreds of dead bat-like creatures and three naked humanoid bodies (two male and one female) in suspended animation within glass containers. The crew recovers the three aliens and begins the return trip to Earth. However, during the return journey, mission control loses contact with Churchill and a rescue mission is launched to investigate. The rescuers discover that Churchill has been severely damaged by fire, yet the three containers bearing the aliens remain intact. The aliens are taken to the European Space Research Centre in London. Prior to an autopsy, the female alien awakens and drains the life force out of a guard. She then escapes the facility and proceeds to drain other humans of their life force, revealing an ability to shape-shift. Meanwhile, in Texas, an escape pod from Churchill is found, with Col. Tom Carlsen inside. Carlsen is flown to London, where he describes the course of events, culminating in the draining of the crew's life force. Carlsen explains that he set fire to the shuttle with the intention of saving Earth from the same fate and escaped in the pod. However, when he is hypnotized, it becomes clear that Carlsen possesses a psychic link to the female alien. Carlsen and SAS Col Colin Caine trace the alien to a psychiatric hospital in Yorkshire. There, the two believe they have managed to trap the alien within the heavily sedated body of the hospital's manager, Dr Armstrong. Carlsen and Caine later learn that they were deceived, as the aliens had wanted to draw them out of London. As Carlsen and Caine are transporting Dr Armstrong back to London, the female alien escapes from her sedated host and disappears. In London, a plague has overtaken the city and martial law has been declared. The two male vampires, previously thought destroyed, have escaped from confinement by shape-shifting into the soldiers guarding them; the pair then transform most of London's population into zombies. After their life force has been drained by the male vampires, the victims seek out other humans to absorb their life force, perpetuating the cycle. The absorbed life forces are channeled by the male vampires to the female vampire, who transmits the accumulated energy to their spaceship in orbit. Dr Fallada impales one of the male vampires with an ancient device of "leaded iron". Carlsen admits to Caine that, while on Churchill, he felt compelled to open the female vampire's container and to share his life force with her. She is later found inside St. Paul's Cathedral, lying upon the altar, transferring the energy to her spaceship. She reveals, much to Carlsen's shock, that they are a part of each other due to the sharing of their life forces, thus their psychic bond. Caine follows Carlsen into the cathedral and is intercepted by the second male vampire, whom he kills. Carlsen impales himself and the female alien simultaneously. The female is only wounded and returns to her ship with Carlsen in tow, releasing a burst of energy that blows open the dome of St. Paul's. The two ascend the column of energy to the spaceship, which then returns to the comet. Ridiculous but ridiculously good. The film boasts a great eclectic cast including Steve Railsback, Peter Firth, Frank Finlay, Mathilda May, and Patrick Stewart – sadly Billy Idol turned down an offer to star as one of the male vampires. Lifeforce was the first film of Tobe Hooper's three-picture deal with Cannon Films, following his success with Poltergeist in 1982, which was a collaboration with producer Steven Spielberg (although many state that Spielberg did all the directing). The other two films are the remake of Invaders from Mars and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. Hooper was second choice after Michael Winner declined. The film was originally filmed and promoted under the same title as the Colin Wilson novel. Cannon Films, which reportedly spent nearly $25 million in hopes of creating a blockbuster film, disliked The Space Vampires for sounding too much like another of the studio's typical low budget exploitation films. As a result, the title was changed to Lifeforce, referring to the spiritual energy the space vampires drain from their victims. The screenplay was written by Dan O'Bannon and Don Jakoby. Tobe Hooper came up with the idea of using Halley's Comet in the screenplay, rather than the asteroid belt as originally used in the novel, as the comet was going to pass by Earth one year following the film's release. A clever idea, as I remember Halley's Comet being a well-discussed subject at the time. The time settings were also changed from the mid-21st century to the present day. The film marked the fourth project to feature special effects produced by Academy Award winner John Dykstra, who in 1986 was granted with the "Caixa Catalunya Award for Best Special Effects" in the Sitges Film Festival (located in Spain) for his special effects work in Lifeforce. The umbrella-like alien spaceship was modelled after an artichoke, while the model London destroyed in the film was actually the remains of Tucktonia, a model village near Christchurch, United Kingdom, that had closed not long before the shooting of the film. It took a week to film the death scene of the pathologist played by Jerome Willis, and bodycasts of Frank Finlay, Patrick Stewart and Aubrey Morris were made by make-up effects supervisor Nick Maley for their death scenes. One effect near the end of the film involving the column of energy rising from the female alien through the top of St. Paul's Cathedral to the spacecraft was engineered by art director Tony Reading. A column of 3-M material was placed against black velvet and a crew member blew cigar smoke into its bottom. This image was then front projected onto a translucent projection screen behind the actors to create the energy column. Simple techniques but the finished product is old school but quite stunning, even by today’s standards. The original cut is said to have been cut to ribbons, which is a shame but the final cut as it stands is quite spectacular and is one of the greatest (and most bizarre) sci-fi horrors of all time.

Event Horizon

Dir: Paul W. S. Anderson

1997

****

I remember going to see 1997’s Event Horizon with three of my best friends. As we left the cinema they all agreed that it had been one of the worst films they had ever seen. They felt the hype didn’t live up to the finished film, that the horror element was laughable and that they had been cheated into seeing it. I remained silent, I knew I wouldn’t be able to convince them otherwise and perhaps they were right in many respects. I enjoyed it immensely. It is a ridiculous film, but then all horror films in space should be a little nonsensical, that’s what makes them fun. Real space travel looks incredibly boring, sure the view is nice but most of the time you’re either exercising, seeing if something works for the billionth time or trying to shit in a bag so that your turd doesn’t float into your colleagues' mouths. I don’t want to see that, I want a haunted house in space and that is exactly what Paul W. S. Anderson gave me. The film is set way in the future. In 2047, a distress signal is received from the Event Horizon, a starship that disappeared during its maiden voyage to Proxima Centauri seven years before and mysteriously reappeared in a decaying orbit around Neptune. The rescue vessel Lewis and Clark is dispatched to look for survivors and determine what happened. Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) of the Lewis and Clark - along with second-in-command Lieutenant Starck (Joely Richardson), pilot Smith (Sean Pertwee), medical technician Peters (Kathleen Quinlan), engineer Ensign Justin (Jack Noseworthy), Doctor D.J. (Jason Isaacs), and rescue technician Cooper (Richard T. Jones)  are also joined by Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill). Dr. Weir, who designed the Event Horizon, briefs the crew on the ship's experimental gravity drive. The drive generates an artificial black hole and uses it to bridge two points in spacetime, reducing travel time over astronomical distances. The only message received from the ship after its departure was a strange recording of screams and howls. When the recording is filtered, Doctor D.J. believes he can make out the Latin phrase "liberate me" ("save me") being spoken among the screams. Upon boarding the Event Horizon, the crew finds evidence of a massacre. As they search for survivors, the ship's gravity drive automatically activates. Justin is briefly pulled into the resulting portal. The activation also causes a shock wave that damages the Lewis and Clark, forcing the entire crew to board the Event Horizon. After Justin is pulled out, he is in a catatonic state, terrified by what he saw on the other side. He attempts suicide, forcing the crew to place him in stasis. The team begins to experience hallucinations corresponding to their fears and regrets: Miller sees Corrick, a subordinate he was forced to abandon to his death; Peters sees her son with his legs covered in bloody lesions; and Weir sees his late wife, with missing eyes, urging him to join her. The crew soon discover a video log of the Event Horizon's crew going insane and mutilating each other. The video log ends with a shot of the Event Horizon's captain, who has apparently gouged out his own eyes, holding them up to the camera and saying in Latin, "liberate tutemet ex inferis" ("save yourself from hell"). Miller and D.J. deduce that the ship's gravity drive opened a gateway into a dimension outside the known universe. Starck theorizes that the Event Horizon has somehow become a sentient being that is tormenting its occupants in an attempt to kill them or lure them back through the portal. Miller decides to destroy the Event Horizon. Peters is lured to her death by a hallucination of her son. Weir, who has gouged his own eyes out and is now possessed by the evil presence, uses an explosive device to destroy the Lewis and Clark. The explosion kills Smith and blasts Cooper off into space. Weir kills D.J. by vivisecting him and corners Starck on the bridge. Miller confronts Weir, who overpowers him and initiates a 10-minute countdown until the Event Horizon will return to the other dimension. Cooper, having used his space suit's oxygen supply to propel himself back to the ship, appears at the bridge window. Weir shoots at him and is blown into space by the ensuing decompression. Miller, Starck, and Cooper survive and manage to seal off the ship's bridge. With their own ship destroyed, Miller plans to split the Event Horizon in two and use the forward section of the ship as a lifeboat. He is attacked by manifestations of Corrick and a resurrected Weir. Miller fights them off and detonates the explosives, sacrificing himself. The gravity drive activates, pulling the ship's rear section into a black hole. Starck and Cooper enter stasis, beside a comatose Justin, and wait to be rescued. Seventy-two days later, the forward section of the Event Horizon is boarded by a rescue party, who discover the remaining crew still in stasis. A newly awakened Starck sees Weir posing as one of the rescuers, then wakes up screaming and is comforted by Cooper. As Cooper restrains the terrified Starck and as one of the rescuers calls for a sedative, the doors ominously close. Demons in space, dark science, Latin and people with no eyeballs….what else could you want from a horror sci-fi? Well, personally, I do want more but only because I know know there was more. Directors usually have a standard 10-week editing period to produce the first cut of a film, as guaranteed by the Directors Guild of America. However, due to the short production schedule of the film, the rapidly approaching release date, and the fact that principal photography hadn't completed yet, Anderson agreed with the Paramount studio to an editing period of six weeks and promised to deliver the film ready for release in August 1997, as Paramount wanted to have a hit film before Titanic, which they were going to release in September. When the main unit wrapped, Anderson was supposed to start editing the film, but he still had to shoot two weeks with the second unit, effectively shortening the time he could spend in post-production to just four weeks. In that short amount of time, only a rough cut of the film could be assembled. Anderson notes that at two hours and 10 minutes, it was overly long, with weak directing and acting that could have used a further editing pass, unfinished special effects and a poor sound mix. In test screenings, the cut was poorly received. There were complaints about the extreme amount of gore, and Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt claim members of the test audience fainted during the screening. Paramount, which had stopped looking at the dailies before any of the gore was shot and were seeing the completed film for the first time along with the audience, were similarly shocked by how gruesome it was and demanded a shorter length time with a decreased amount of gore. I still don’t understand why you would cut gore from a horror film, test screenings are full of people who will say they didn’t like something anyway because if they think they will never be asked back if they continuously say they like a film and don’t appear critical of anything. Anderson believes that while his first cut was justifiably considered too long, Paramount forced him to make a cut that was instead too short, and that it would benefit by restoring around 10 minutes of missing footage, including some of the deleted gore. It was too late and the film is what it is. Apparently real-life amputees were used for special effects scenes in which Event Horizon crew members were mutilated, and pornographic film actors were hired to make the sex and rape scenes more realistic and graphic, so while I wanted more gore and horror, maybe it did take things a little too far. We’ll never know, a year after the film's release, John Goldwyn, head of production at Paramount, admitted to him that he felt the film had not been properly released, and that the studio wanted him to make the longer version he always intended. So for some time, Anderson and producer Jeremy Bolt worked on a director's cut. They traveled the world to locate the original footage, some of which was found in the strangest places (for example, in an abandoned Transylvanian salt mine). However, they quickly realized that since the movie was made before the DVD era (when alternate versions became much more commonplace), much of the original footage had been destroyed, or its storage place had not been documented; what was retrieved had often been badly archived or was otherwise degraded. It’s shocking really, you expect this sort of thing from really old films but not from a film made in 1997. I thought it was a great idea, with a great cast of characters. Call it a guilty pleasure if you like but I found it entertaining and have re-watched it many times. An overlooked horror that deserves more love.

Fortress 2: Re-Entry

Dir: Geoff Murphy

1999

***

No offense to Luxenberg but it isn’t exactly known for it’s film industry, but here it is, possibly the only American-Luxembourgish science fiction action film to have ever graced the bargain bin of Blockbuster Video. Fortress 2: Re-Entry did not make it into the cinemas. The first time I saw Fortress in 1994 with my best mate is still one of my favorite cinema experiences of all time. We loved it and it remains a firm favorite of ours, one that we still quote all these years later. Fortress 2 is something I think we both wanted but only if it was treated the same way as the first. This was, unfortunately, far from the case. I love a good b-movie, and Fortress 2 is a good b-movie, but the original film is a cult masterpiece, the second is a far cry from its greatness. I would argue that situating the second film in a space prison was suitably b-movieish and a great idea but very little of the charm of the first film is present. All the great characters from the first film were killed off but none of them have been replaced by anyone as good – apart from the legendary Pam Grier who is a saving grace (and goddess) to cult film obsessives and all-round nerds such as myself. Christopher Lambert is the only person to return from the first film, and the mighty Stuart Gordon is replaced by Geoff Murphy – a good director who is better than all the sequels he has been given throughout his career. I suspect he was hired based on his 1992 film Freejack. Fortress writers Steven Feinberg and Try Neighbors wrote the story but they clearly peaked with the original. The film takes place a whole ten years after the events of the first film, with a 2027 John Brennick lurking somewhere in North America, still on the run from Men-Tel and living in the rural mountains. His son Danny, now ten years old, runs to him and tells him to come home immediately. When they arrive, there are three people waiting for them. They ask Brennick to help them destroy Men-Tel's new power station, saying that the company is on the verge of collapse and "without their power, they have no power". Brennick refuses, wanting to protect his family, so the trio leave on a boat. As Brennick waves goodbye, two Men-Tel helicopters appear and he scrambles his family's escape plan. He sends Danny and Karen (played by Beth Toussaint after Loryn Locklin declined the offer to return) through an underground passage, while he leads the soldiers on a wild goose chase. The battle ends with one helicopter destroyed, but Brennick's Jeep is overturned. He is then knocked out and captured. He wakes up in a room with a disembodied voice telling him that he is in prison again and has been sentenced to death. He has been implanted with a behavior modification device which causes headaches of various intensity when prisoners enter prohibited areas. He also finds one of the men who visited him, a former Men-Tel vice president, who is now brain-damaged because of an improperly planted device. Another of John's visitors, a former soldier, is also in the jail and friends with one of the guards. Brennick starts making enemies almost immediately. A video of Director Teller "welcomes" the new prisoners. We then see a demonstration, like the one seen in the first film, where he shows them a female prisoner receiving her death sentence: being blown out into space through an airlock. This is the film’s big twist. The video shows the prisoners that their new prison is actually a space station orbiting the Earth which is used to generate power via a solar array. How the hell do they get off a space station? Brennick tries to escape in a water-delivery shuttle but is caught and sent to "The Hole" - an exposed area of the ship where he is bombarded with solar radiation while the station faces the sun and extreme cold when its orbit takes it behind the Earth. I’m pretty sure it’s the sort of thing no one could survive but in the late 90s Christopher Lambert was still pretty tough. When Men-Tel's president arrives he tries to kill Brennick by jettisoning him without a spacesuit. Brennick manages to hold his breath and propel himself towards another airlock and back into the prison, somehow without freezing to death, this again may be due to Lambert being a tough guy but probably more to do with Steven Feinberg and Try Neighbors not knowing much about space. Due to the sudden decompression, the computerized warden, Zed, begins to malfunction and cannot perform its duties. Brennick uses a prison gun to destroy the computer and Teller is subsequently electrocuted. Brennick and all his friends board the Shuttle – because re-entry is easy - and head back to Earth, where John reunites with his family. The low budget shows far more than it did in the first film but then I think its safe to say the budget was much lower this time round. Budget isn’t everything, there is sufficient wit and quirkiness and actually, the special effects aren’t too bad. It just suffers from being not quite as good as it’s excellent predecessor.

Space Truckers

Dir: Stuart Gordon

1997

****

I thought Space Truckers was fairly awful when it first came out but I still liked it. Watching it now in retrospect I find I love it even more. I’m certainly a paid up member of the church of Stuart Gordon though, so that probably has something to do with it but I think when you realise that it is a joke – a low budget B movie space opera that's a parody of low budget B movie space operas – its easier to like, understand and ultimately enjoy. Written by Former "National Lampoons" editor Ted Mann, the film intentionally features "no scientists, no techies, none of the unusual polished, sanitary environments” because, as he put it “Space is like anywhere else - the people who are there are underpaid and poorly regarded." I see Harry Harrison as Mann’s clearest influence, the film being more Bill the Galactic Hero rather than The Stainless Seal Rat though. I think it failed at the box office and has subsequently been branded as one of the worst films in modern cinema due to poor marketing and total misunderstanding. It’s intentionally cheap and ridiculous but its heaps of fun. It begins in the future at a corporation's base on the Neptunian moon of Triton. Mercenaries are desperately setting up a defense perimeter to try to hold off an unstoppable cyborg warrior. The commander Saggs and scientist Nabel, seal themselves inside the control room. The cyborg destroys the soldiers' tank and then attacks a helicopter—which crashes into said control room. The soldiers are killed one by one, until Nabel finally deactivates the cyborg with a remote control. The remaining corporate employees discover that the cyborg was created by Nabel for company owner E.J. Saggs. Saggs takes the remote from Nabel. He reactivates the cyborg and orders it to kill Nabel. A devilish early twist made all the better by Nabel being played by Charles Dance and Saggs being played by the most iconic ‘uncredited’ actor of all time Shane Rimmer. The story then turns to, John Canyon (played by Dennis Hopper who is clearly having the time of his life), one of the last independent "space truckers", as he drops off his cargo of square pigs at a "truck stop" space station (the square pigs are one of the films more notorious scenes – pigs bread in squares to make transport easier – the pigs look like they’re made out of sweaty rubber or Muppets gone wrong if you will. This is the point whereby many people either walked out of the cinema or gave up liking it). He soon becomes embroiled in a brawl with the trucking company head, Keller, who is suddenly – and most hilariously - sucked out into space. He and his two passengers – Cindy (played by Debi Mazar), a waitress who has promised to marry him in exchange for a ride to Earth to see her mother, and Mike (Stephen Dorff), an up-and-coming space trucker working for the company - take on a deal to transport a stock of alleged sex dolls to Earth. Chased by police investigating Keller's death, John takes his rig into the "scum zone", a region controlled by space pirates. The rig takes damage, leaving them adrift and they are soon captured by the pirate ship Regalia, commanded by the company-hating Captain Macanudo. Cindy agrees to have sex with him if he would take the cargo and let them go. The captain is soon revealed to be Nabel, who has rebuilt his grievously-injured body and has gone into piracy as revenge against Saggs for betraying him. Charles Dance clearly revels in his inventive and ridiculous character and it’s a joy to watch. The cargo that John's rig is carrying is in fact a full supply of the cyborg warriors Nabel designed and built for Saggs' company. One of the cyborgs comes alive, kills most of the crew, and severely damages the ship. John, Cindy and Mike take their rig and escape as the Regalia explodes. As they make their way back to Earth, John and Mike find a mortally-wounded Macanudo in the hold, who reveals the true nature of the cargo to them. John releases Cindy from any obligation of marrying him, and tells her and Mike to take the escape pod while he releases the cargo in the atmosphere, where it will burn up on re-entry. Cindy and Mike land safely, but the rig is unable to return to space and explodes in the sky, however, John manages to escape before the explosion. John, Cindy and Mike go to the hospital to see Cindy's mother, who became sick twenty years earlier and was frozen until a cure was found; John is smitten with her at first sight. Meanwhile, Saggs - now President of Earth after the government was privatized - visits John, Cindy and Mike in the hospital, where he offers John a new rig and gives the trio a suitcase full of money to keep them quiet about his cyborg invasion plan. John agrees to the deal, but Mike angrily throws the suitcase out the window. Below, Saggs re-enters his presidential limousine; having planted a bomb in the suitcase, he triggers the detonator just as the suitcase lands on his limousine's roof, killing him. With Saggs dead and Earth safe, Mike, Cindy, John and Cindy's mother blast off in their brand new rig. It’s as hilarious as it is ridiculous, like a 1930s melodrama, a 1950s b-movie and a 1980s space opera had a kid together but didn’t have enough money to feed it. You can either love the film because its ‘so bad its good’ or you’ll appreciate the intended parody but either way there is plenty to enjoy but particularly for Stuart Gordon fans. If anything, you can’t help but enjoy watching the ensemble cast clearly having the times of their lives, never once taking any of it seriously. It’s a cult classic, it’s a small cult but it’s a classic none the less.

Alien: Covenant

Dir: Ridley Scott

2017

***

The only thing worse than a prequel is a sequel of a prequel that is itself still a prequel. The conversation about whether Prometheus was or wasn’t a true Alien film got boring before the 2012 film was even in cinemas – it got even more tiresome after the film was released. To set the record straight, it was decided to call the film Alien: Covenant, but even though I was underwhelmed by the first film, I think Prometheus: Covenant would have been a more appropriate title. As it is it lack conviction and it tries to please everyone but pleases nobody. I hated the film within the first few seconds when I released that the trailer I saw (featuring James Franco as the captain of the new spaceship and crew) was essentially the first part of the film and not taken from what was seen in cinemas. So essentially, if you missed the trailer, then you missed the first few minutes of the film. That my friends, is a dick move. I had little enthusiasm for this film really, I guess I secretly hoped it would go back to being a mindless action film in the absence of any real intelligent writing, but the announcement that Danny McBride would play a main character shattered all interest. However, I was drawn in by the dream-like intro scene featuring Michael Fassbender’s David and Guy Pearce’s Peter Weyland. Maybe there was more to the story then I first thought. A lot of what made the first Alien movies so successful is that the situation our protagonists found themselves in was so limited. There was a claustrophobic feel to the film that added that extra element of terror. However, they were horror films, Alien: Covenant is something else, with horror elements. Little time is spent in space or in a spaceship, the xenomorph is around killing people but it isn’t quite the alien we all know and it really isn’t the film’s main villain. Its original title: Alien: Paradise Lost, was probably rather more suitable, although I’m sure it would have confused many and maybe would have given away too much of the plot for others. The overall concept of the film is great, I just don’t think it was executed particularly well. After the initial intro scene, the main story begins eleven years after the events of Prometheus. It undoes a lot of what I hated about Prometheus throughout the film which was great for me but not great if you were a fan of the 2012 prequel. A huge colonization ship called Covenant is bound for a remote planet named Origae-6, with two thousand colonists in stasis and 1,140 human embryos aboard. The ship is monitored by Covenant’s own android Walter, a newer model that physically resembles David from Prometheus (also played by Michael Fassbinder). The crew awakes and soon realise that they have been taken out of status early. Origae-6 is still seven years away but a new habitable planet has been detected, so they are obliged to go and check it out. No points for guessing what they find there. There are a few pleasant surprises among the clichés however, with a reverse chest-burster (an alien popping out of someones back rather than their front) being my personal favorite. There is a lot of wandering around and not achieving anything by people who are supposedly very clever but there is also a much darker edge to the story. It moves away from the alien concept quite a bit in places which I still haven’t decided whether I like or not. I like that it tries something totally new but I also miss the hum of a desolate space ship. I like the whole ‘In space no one can hear you scream’ thing, rather than ‘Let’s check out this planet/oh no, lets get the hell off this planet’ scenario, and of course Ridley Scotts obsession with making everything look like a classical epic. There was always something biblical about the original alien films and the many scripts for Aliens and Alien 3 were amazing in what many writers/directors wanted to achieve, but now that Scott is exploring many of those ideas I’m not sure its what I would have chosen for the story. I think I just hate prequels. Its different and I like what they did with the character of David but I feel that there is still something not quite right about this new direction. Maybe they should have ditched all of the elements we recognise from the original alien films and should have started from scratch. Maybe they should have made a continuation of the story instead of a prequel. And maybe, just maybe, they should have just left the franchise alone. I’m still very much on the fence with this one.

StarCrash

Dir: Luigi Cozzi

1978

*****

Luigi Cozzi is one of the greatest film directors of all time, never once letting a lack of budget get in the way of making a good film. Seriously though, he has made some of my favorite films of all time and he is genuinely a great writer. One of his first stories was Dario Argento’s amazing Four Flies on Grey Velvet and if I’m to be completely honest (and I am by the way) then I would argue that StarCrash has a stronger, more interesting and original story to it than Star Wars has – the film that it will always be compared to. Cozzi has stated on many occasions, and has backed it up with original scripts and designs, that StarCrash was in development before Star Wars was released. When you look at the story, it really is only outer space that the two have in common and Star Wars is basically a cross between a western and a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Hidden Fortress anyway, the story is about as formulaic as it gets – just with laser guns, robots and big green aliens. He may have read Star War’s script and he might have been asked to make a space opera to challenge George Lucas’s hit but that’s neither here nor there. He clearly never saw Star Wars before filming. I believe it is possible to love both without too much comparison. Cozzi never described StarCrash as a science fiction film but more of a science fantasy, which I would agree with, although I’m not sure any of the science actually stands up. The science really isn’t the most important bit anyway, StarCrash is about wise-cracking robots, Caroline Munro’s skimpy outfit and Marjoe Gortner’s excitable eyebrows. Plus it stars David Hasselhoff, sporting the largest haircut I’ve ever seen. You may think that the Hoff playing a young and beautiful space Prince in a tight leather jumpsuit would be the film at its most camp, but you’d be wrong. Marjoe Gortner out-Hoffs the Hoff by some margin, one can only assume that everything young Hasselhoff learnt about being cool, he learnt from Gortner. The film has an evil count, as all good fantasy films do, and who could be more evil in 1978 than Joe Spinell? He had played a few minor roles as gang hoods and mafia muscle men by that point, so he was always seen as something of a bad guy, but after StarCrash he went on to star as the infamous Frank Zito in Maniac – sure he was also in Rocky and The Godfather – but I think you can also credit StarCrash for his success and for casting him as the film’s main villain. His counterpart was played by Christopher Plummer, so that has to count for something. Plummer’s acting is way ahead of everyone else’s, so much so that it makes the film stop in its tracks somewhat and the other actors look stunned and silent (as I’m sure original audiences were) and it feels a little awkward for a moment. Luckily the silly camp fun returns and the character are soon fighting killer robots and flying around the universe. Plummer has nothing but nice things to say of the film, however, this may have something to do with his $10,000 a day salary and the film’s shooting location…"Give me Rome any day. I'll do porno in Rome, as long as I can get to Rome. Getting to Rome was the greatest thing that happened in that for me. I think it was only about three days in Rome on that one. It was all shot at once". Discussing his role as the Emperor, he said, "How can you play the Emperor Of The Universe? What a wonderful part to play. It puts God in a very dicey moment, doesn't it? He's very insecure, God, when the Emperor’s around". Rome clearly had an effect on him. There are many highlights in StarCrash, my favorites include; the hundred-foot robot with breasts that chase our heroes on a beach, the evil red blobs that supposedly drive people ‘insane’, Elle the police robot who becomes more and more like a wise-cracking cowboy the longer the film goes on, the planet of Amazonian Women and the rather motionless stop-motion killer ninja robot twins. The main highlight of the film though is Caroline Munro, not because she is naked for the majority of the film but because she is sassy, likable and throws herself in to the role giving it her everything. The legendary John Barry composed the the film’s score – and it is brilliant – although he was never allowed to see any of the film while working on it as the producers feared he might pull out. Four million dollars isn’t much when you’re making a sci-fi space opera but at the same time I’m amazed they actually had that much money. I still love it though. Cozzi is clearly a big fan of Greek mythology and the work of Ray Harryhausen, having described the film as ‘Sinbad goes to space’ and originally selling it as ‘Sinbad on Mars’. He would go on to make a far more convincing space story in 1980s Contamination (even though it doesn’t actually take place in space) and would of course exercise his love of Greek mythology in the amazing Hercules (1983), it’s follow up The Adventures of Hercules II (1985) and Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989) – all staring Hulk star Lou Farrigno. It had many financial problems during its development and distribution fell through until the great Roger Corman stepped in to save the day. Corman – a man of taste – knows a good thing when he sees it and the rest is history. Often mistaken for a terrible film, StarCrash is in fact a cinematic masterpiece, a classic sci-fi adventure and better than at least two of the Star Wars sequels.

The Cloverfield Paradox

Dir: Julius Onah

2018

***

There are various different ways of looking at The Cloverfield Paradox. Firstly, the original Cloverfield came out in 2008 and was celebrated for it’s clever marketing. It wasn’t a remarkable film – a found-footage contemporary monster movie – but it was entertaining all the same. No one expected a sequel, let alone a series and it is clear that was never the intention. However, they had a name and J.J. Abrams clearly wanted a franchise of his own (after messing with just about everyone else’s). 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane came from out of nowhere – again, a clever marketing ploy – and it was well received. It conjured up even more questions about the first film and explained the ‘universe’ rather cleverly. It was a totally different style of film but it worked. It was then announced that more ‘Cloverfield’ films would be released, each showing a unique viewpoint of the event that was unfolding and each answering previous questions, as well as asking its own. The best possible kind of movie expansion in my mind, many franchises have their own ‘universes’ but Cloverfield looked like it was on to something uniquely special. The Cloverfield Paradox came out of nowhere, even more so than 10 Cloverfield Lane, Bad Robot Productions waiting until Super Bowl LII to announce its release – which was to be just two hours later on streaming channel Netflix. A great surprise for everyone with a Netflix account but maybe a disappointment for everyone who had enjoyed the two previous films and were looking forward to seeing it, what ever it was going to be, on the big screen. Clever marketing. Or was it? Bad Robot bought the script for 10 Cloverfield Lane when it was just a spec script called The Cellar. It had nothing to do with Cloverfield but was re-written so that it would connect to the first film. A lucky day for the scriptwriters in many respects but also a back-handed compliment in that it was if being told that their script was good but would never go anywhere as it was. Harsh but probably accurate. I think the same could be said for The Cloverfield Paradox. I find it somewhat outrageous though that it’s writer, Oren Uziel, had no idea that his idea, originally called God Particle, had been bought, rewritten and absorbed into the Cloverfield franchise until production was well underway. You have to expect it when writing a spec script but still, it’s got to hurt a little. The truth is though, The Cloverfield Paradox would have struggled at the box office. Spaceship horrors are a tough sell, I personally love them but 2017’s Life – a brilliant recent addition to the genre, limped at the box office and Ridley Scott is pretty much killing off everyone else’s chances by butchering his own Alien franchise. People are looking to the small screen for their sci-fi pleasure, so, I’m sad to say, Netflix was a good move on all accounts. Apparently the production costs had risen anyway, the film was filmed back in 2016 and there have clearly been problems. The Super Bowl announcement might seem a clever marketing ploy but the truth is it screams of a last minute damage control. I like watching my films on the big screen but I’ll be honest, finding out about this film in the morning and being able to watch it in the comfort of my own home that very night was pretty sweet and as much as I enjoyed it, I would have felt a little cheated if I’d paid to see it in the cinema. It’s better than Alien: Covenant but I preferred Life. Cloverfield isn’t a franchise I’m that interested in really if I’m being honest, I’m curious but fairly ambivalent towards it. I do admire what they’re doing in some respects, as cheap as it is, it is full of interesting possibilities. First saw a monster in New York, second was a creepy underground bunker scenario and third is in space. The Cloverfield Paradox finally gives us some answers as to what has been going on, these are not particularly original answers, but they’re answers all the same. The crew of the science space ship/space station ‘Shepard’ are circling the Earth and using a particle accelerator in order to solve the planet’s energy crisis. After two years of failure, they finally get the accelerator working properly but things go very wrong after the initial start. After thinking that they may have mistakenly destroyed the earth, they soon realise that they’ve accidentally jumped to an alternative dimension. We are told early on in the film in a news clip featuring Gotham regular Donal Logue as a science commentator, that this kind of untested particle acceleration could lead to nightmarish scenarios but the clip is switched off by a member of the crew – much to their downfall. You can’t help but think of films such as 2017’s Life, Event Horizon and The Mist. There is also a little bit of David Cronenberg in there, as well as a few scenes H.R. Giger could have designed. I also saw a lot of H.P. Lovecraft in some of the more surreal happenings, as well as Sam Raimi and The Addams Family. The story barely works as part of the Cloverfield story, it certainly wouldn’t have stood alone, but it does have its positives. Firstly, it’s got a fantastic cast, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Zhang Ziyi, Daniel Bruhl, Aksel Hennie, John Ortiz and Chris O’Dowd (plus voice cameos from Simon Pegg and Greg Grunberg – presumably to give the film a few extra nerd credentials). Each actor does a fine job and the story is consistently exciting, the only big downfall are the pointless scenes set on earth. It’s nothing special within the genre but it’s very easy to watch. Chris O’Dowd actually keeps the film going with a welcome injection of humour and some of the strange scenarios that the alternative reality throws up are great. I don’t think it makes the most of the possibilities the scenario could lead to, but for a TV movie its popcorn-tastic. I’m not really interested in a Cloverfield television series, so I’m quite glad they’re moving in this direction. I’m not disappointed because I had absolutely no expectations, to be honest, the more ridiculous the story gets the happier I’ll probably be. Think Twilight Zone rather than Black Mirror and you shouldn't be too disappointed.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Dir: Rian Johnson

2017

***

I was disappointed with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and lost interest in the franchise. I reassessed everything, after being an obsessive my whole life. It probably wasn’t as bad as all that but anticipation is a funny thing. I never in a million years thought Luke, Leia and Han would ever return, I thought Return of the Jedi was the end and even though I always wanted more, deep down I knew that those much-loved characters were probably best left dancing with the Ewoks at the never-ending treehouse party on Endor. The prequels were authentic only in that they were created by George Lucas. I watched them, I didn’t hate them but they felt far far away from the galaxy far far away that I had fallen in love with as a child. They did however end rather well, leading up to a New Hope nicely. I was happy to call it a day from there really but thrilled when The Force Awakens was announced. The thing that got me was that, after many years of saying he categorically would never ever return, Harrison Ford signed on. Brilliant I thought, until The Force Awakens came out and it was clear Ford still had no enthusiasm for the franchise and left as quickly as he had returned. I didn’t want to watch a Star Wars film without Han Solo, so I had no real interest in the series from then on. However, 2016’s Rouge One blew me away. It was both new and authentic and it seemed that franchise still had life in it. I suddenly had no expectations and went into The Last Jedi with as open a mind as I could possibly have. Both Looper and Brick were overrated films but Rian Johnson is a good director and a brilliant writer. I still think he was an odd choice for episode eight but he brought a lot of good to the table. He also brought strange, questionable and down-right awful for dessert. There are things about The Last Jedi that I loved. I loved that Johnson went out to undo all of what I disliked about The Force Awakens. He took pretty much ever character in a different direction than where they were headed and turned the franchises formula on its head. He had to, The Force Awakens was a copy of A New Hope and everyone knew it. However, in taking the characters in a new direction he also made a few of them utterly redundant and added new ones that the film/franchise really didn’t need. The first 40 minutes of The Last Jedi are seriously boring. I didn’t connect with it and had very little interest. My popcorn was left uneaten. Then something happened. Something unexpected, and while I’m not sure that it was a very Star Wars thing that happened, unexpected is good. This certain something involved Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia. The film went fantasy where it should have stayed sci-fi, I don’t think it worked at all and yet I think I loved it anyway. Maybe because they did something interesting with Leia, unlike The Force Awakens. It is more than likely that I liked this scene because it was Carrie Fisher’s last film and it felt like an awesome tribute – even though it was obviously made before she died. I still don’t know what to make of it but it certainly reeled me back into the film. Rian Johnson was suddenly calling out the shots and doing things his way and I respected that. He wrote certain scenes that were so ‘Star Wars’ that I was left wondering why we had waited until the tenth Star Wars film to see them. Before anyone corrects me, this is the tenth Star Wars film as I always include Star Wars Holiday Special. I don’t count the Ewok films though, I’m not completely insane. I digress. Rian Johnson was definitely on to something with his script, the only problem (and it is quite a big problem) is that it often felt like he was writing it as he was filming it. It felt incredibly disjointed at times, like the finished film wasn’t at all what it was initially meant to be. I have seen interviews with the cast since its release and they haven’t convinced me that they liked it either, which doesn’t surprise me. So much of The Force Awakens is wiped away, you have to wonder where on earth this trilogy is going and if they actually know themselves. Why, after seeing so many franchises fail, would you start a trilogy of films without knowing how it is going to end? Carrie Fisher died after this film was completed, so that cannot be an excuse. The Last Jedi doesn’t feel like part of the series, which could be a good or a bad thing. Rouge One wasn’t part of the series and was a good thing, I can’t help but feel The Last Jedi is somewhat of a disturbance in the force. Lucky a certain character tells us half way through the film not to worry about it, a character I generally agree with, so worry about it I did not. It’s a shame Leia, Luke and Han never saw each other again as a threesome but I’m over it. It is time to put nostalgia to one side as it was stifling the future. The future of Star Wars doesn’t feature Leia or Han, which is a hard pill to swallow, but the newer characters have enough in them to keep me interested, they just need to get rid of some of the more cartoonish characters and understand where humour fits into the franchise. Rian Johnson’s comedic input left a lot to be desired, Disney need to know that the MCU humour works in the MCU only and not in Star Wars, which has its own establish sense of humour. I hated the frog people, I hated the very ‘prequel’ styled casino scene, I hated the poor attempts at humour, I thought the newer characters were forgotten, the continuity was some of the worst I have ever seen and the editing is shocking. This is also not the Luke or Leia I know and love but, well done for doing something completely different, it needed to happen, plus the hyper-speed scene, the Leia scene and the 'oh my god I'm seven years old again' scene were ace. However, maybe now we can put all the negativity behind us and make a great Star Wars film? Shame it had to wait until the third film in the trilogy but better late than never (fingers crossed). The Last Jedi scrapped the barrel but pulled it back in the end but the franchise is on its last warning for sure. Admiral Ackbar and Nien Nunb deserved better but for now, life goes on.

Red Planet

Dir: Antony Hoffman

2000

***

1995’s Apollo 13 represented a re-entry of the space travel genre into the mainstream. Based on the factual happenings aboard the real space capsule, advances in special effects made a realistic adaption possible and many similar films followed. Three years later in 1998, Michael Bay released Armageddon, very much a fantasy space story that clung to the coat-tails of Apollo’s success. Apollo 13 was serious drama while Armageddon was entertaining nonsense, a middle ground was needed and indeed desired. The year 2000 saw two films attempt this, Brian De Palma’s very un-Brian De Palma style film Mission to Mars and Antony Hoffman’s Red Planet. Both films explored the idea of human kind making that first bold journey to the planet Mars, something that back in 2000 we thought we’d probably do relatively soon, or at least think about. Neither film did well, I actually liked both, even though I will admit they were full of faults. They’re a little too good to be considered guilty pleasures in all fairness and actually space films haven’t got that much better since. Red Planet has many different styles. It starts off like an early neon Luc Besson version of Alien, before becoming something entirely different. It’s got some pretty heavy hitters, including Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss, Tom Sizemore and Terence Stamp, all who are on good form. The film is set in 2056 where earth is going through an ecological crisis, due to pollution and overpopulation. Automated missions have already sent algae to the planet, our crew are to be the first visitors with a mission to oversee the first stage of terraforming Mars for human benefit. Things go wrong. It actually ticks all the boxes it sets out to tick, it is successful as an action film, is a genuine contender when it comes to being a thriller and could be considered a fine horror film too. It has everything you could want from a sci-fi space film, other than believable science and scenarios (although how fire is depicted in space was applauded by the experts and the Mars Pathfinder did indeed use airbags to land), but compared to Armageddon it looks like a documentary. It’s very easy to watch and there are some nice little details that I think deserve respect. I loved how they incorporated the Mars Pathfinder Lander and Sojourner Rover and made them integral parts of the story, I love the cast, even though they didn’t like each other and I also love the little space titbits thrown into the script and plot, such as Simon Baker’s character being named Chip Pettengill, after astronomer Gordon Pettengill who was well known for his research observing Mercury from the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rice, Carrie-Anne Moss’s character being named Kate Bowman after 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Dave Bowman and in the scene where she sends her report back to earth on the condition of the HAB, she states the situation is Tango Uniform, correct phonetic slang for ‘tits up’. The big star of the show though is AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion), a robot panther/dog that was built to check out the planet at high speeds. During the crash landing, AMEE accidently goes wrong at switches to kill mode, which is utterly ridiculous but lots of fun to watch. However, the film is remembered for Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore’s behind the camera spat, whereby Kilmer complained about Sizemore’s peripheral treatment (the producers flew in an exercise machine for him on request) and Sizemore threw a weight at him. They refused to be on set together, so many of their scenes were shot using body doubles – which is far more ridiculous than anything featured in the film’s plot. Sizemore punches Kilmer in the chest hard on screen which made the final cut of the film (Sizemore defended this by stating that he was instructed by a producer not to punch him in the face) and people spoke more of this than the actual film itself. Most of the cast have disowned the film and Antony Hoffman didn’t direct again for another fourteen years, and even then it was only a short film. The film also received criticism for having the same soundtrack to 2000’s Pitch Black, as composer Graeme Revell, who scored both films, used the same music and hoped no one would notice. I personally think it’s an incredibly strong directional debut. I like silly space films and this had everything you could want from one. Better than Mission to Mars anyway.