a_lost_packet_":1l7r8hx4 said:
A Boy and His Dog - It's been quite awhile since I've seen it but, I remember it to be pretty good. An adaption of a Harlan Ellison story.
It's good. It's a bit different from the story, but if memory serves, Ellison wrote the screenplay as well, so that's all intentional. Also made me look at Jason Robards a bit differently, whom I'd previously mostly known from "Something Wicked This Way Comes" (which I will say more about shortly).
yevaud":1l7r8hx4 said:
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: What can I say? Another early 80s campy movie. And anything that features John Lithgow as a mad genius has to be great!
Awesome suggestion! This is a cult classic, and it's very very . . . odd. All the aliens are named John (even the women). They had a race war, which is now playing out in New Jersey. It's bizarre, but excellent too. Not exactly a spoof; it's more of a send-up of the B movie genre as well as comic books, though it goes in other directions too. Banzai himself is ludicrously qualified -- rock star, neurosurgeon, physicist, and crime-fighter, all at once. He's played totally deadpan by Peter Weller. It was intended to become a series (though that makes it rather puzzling that they killed off Rawhide, who is also the narrator, played by Clancy Brown) but didn't. The DVD release includes a making-of film that explains that it is actually a documentary, and there's also a website pretending the same; the producers seem to avoid at all costs admitting that it's fictional, even though it's so off-the-wall strange. The key is to not take it too seriously.
HRacct":1l7r8hx4 said:
I've found there are two kinds of reactions to the movie Hitchhiker's Guide, one that says yeah, I get it, and one that says, so what or huh? At that time I had just read the Restaurant at the end of the Universe, but was interested in it. So, my nephew and I went to see it, and he filled me in on the parts I missed about it.
Hitchhiker's Guide has been many things. It was a radio show, a TV miniseries, a text-adventure computer game, a series of novels, a towel, and now a motion picture. In each incarnation, it changed, often drastically, so when people complain that it's not faithful, this is mainly because they only know one of the other incarnations and have made the assumption that it is the "true" one. But according to Douglas Adams, this is not so. There is no definitive version. They are all different. In fact, the most radical departures from previous incarnations in the movie are from Douglas Adams himself -- he was writing the script when he died, so although the script is credited to the man hired to finish it, it's really Adams' work. I liked it, personally, though it took a bit of adjustment to accept an American accent for Ford Prefect.
Some other movies that come to mind....
The Day the Earth Stood Still The 1951 original, specifically, starring Michael Rennie and with a score that leans heavily on a theremin. It's a very good movie, about an alien who comes to Earth at the height of Cold War paranoia, to deliver a message. But the message can only be given to all the world at once, which presents logistical and diplomatic problems, so while that gets sorted out, Klaatu decides to go mingle with the humans to learn about them, much to the alarm of his US Army handlers. The special effects hold up remarkably well (largely because they were used sparingly), and although many elements (including the theremin) will seem cliched, this is actually the movie that got them started.
Something Wicked This Way Comes Some would call this a horror movie rather than SF, but it's by Ray Bradbury, and I think fits in the category nicely. It's actually pretty scary for a Disney film, and suitable for children as long as they can duck behind the couch as needed. It tells the story of two boys in small town America in the early part of the 20th Century who become enthralled when a traveling carnival arrives in town -- oddly, in October, a season ill-suited to that sort of thing as the weather turns chill. The carnival is led by the sinister Mr Dark, and appears to grant people their deepest desires. Each wish is granted in a monkey's-paw sort of way, and soon Mr Dark is tempting the boys as well. It's good. To save money, the studio cast then-unknown Jonathon Pryce as Mr Dark, and the choice proved brilliant. He makes your spine tingle.
The Navigator I stumbled upon this New Zealand-made medieval time-travel fantasy at a video rental store in the 90s. It's good. A copper-mining village in Cumbria is facing the prospect of infection by the Black Death, which has already afflicted a nearby village, and they ask for help from their resident seer, a young boy with second sight. The boy has a vision that they must erect a cross (made from local copper) upon the highest steeple in Christendom before the next full moon, and then they will be spared, and that he must lead them through the middle of the Earth to get there. They get a big copper nugget and start digging in the mine shaft, per the boy's direction, and find themselves emerging in 20th Century Wellington, NZ. It's not your typical fish-out-of-water time-travel story.
Time Bandits Often inaccurately called a Monty Python film, this was Terry Gilliams' first post-Python film. It does feature a number of Pythons, but it is not a Python film. It's got a lot of laughs, but the overall story is meant to be taken seriously despite the fantastical nature of it. A boy in suburban England yearns for a more exciting life, and one night, he gets his wish as a troupe of dwarfs emerges from his closet while fleeing from the Supreme Being with a stolen map plotting all the holes in creation. The dwarfs intend to exploit those holes for personal enrichment, traveling through time and space to become stinkin' rich. The dwarfs are a "whos who" of 1980s little people in entertainment, though thanks to the unfairness of movie billing, David Rappaport (who plays Randall, the leader of the troupe) got only ninth billing. (His costar Craig Warnock, who played the boy, gets tenth billing. David Warner, who plays the villian, Evil, gets eighth billing and the 1 through 7 slots are all minor parts played by big-name stars.) It kind of fits in the same category as Buckaroo Banzai in that it's not entirely clear whether it's meant to be silly or serious, but I'd say this movie is more serious, because it makes some very potent observations on good, evil, and human nature.
The Dark Crystal was a labor of love by Jim Henson, who had devised an extraordinarily rich world populated entirely by nonhumans who are portrayed live-action by elaborate puppets. If you thought Yoda was cool, that's nothing compared to this. Frank Oz, originally hired as director, eventually was persuaded to take up two of the major roles (though their voices are done by others): the seer Aughra and the conniving Chamberlain. (The Chamberlain was one of the most elaborate wire-operated puppets ever built, with an exceptional range of motion in his face.) The world is extremely detailed, both in culture and in biology. "Avatar" comes near it in terms of creating a believable world that is almost live-action and populating it with impossible creatures, but the world of the Dark Crystal is much richer despite the shorter runtime in which to establish it. One wishes very much that Henson had shared more of his visions of this world. Like "Avatar", the story is archetypal, and the final conclusion is not very surprising; it's how everybody gets there and what happens along the way that's interesting. They really do make you believe these creatures are real, with real, everyday concerns. Skesis and Ur Ru ("Mystics" in the final cut), Podlings and Gelflings, Landstriders and Garthim. It's beautiful.
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