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haimericus
Reviews
Urutora Q (1965)
Impressive for the time, still entertaining
With the sobering intro/outro narration of The Twilight Zone, the normal-day-turned-Lovecraftian-horror of The X-Files, and a practical effects team that dared greatly and generally succeeded, this ought to be better known.
The monster-of-the-week format and 30-minute episodes don't give much time for character development, of course. The likeable cast include a hard-charging lady reporter, a wise old scientist with government connections, and a pair of pilots-for-hire who transport them to the scene of the trouble and provide the muscle as needed.
The real stars, of course, are the monsters--a giant slug that shoots rays from its eyestalks, a creepy tentacled balloon monster that fills the skies over Tokyo, a prehistoric beast that is reawakened when a tunneling project disturbs its eggs (yes that was a Kolchak plot too!). They give you the monsters in all their rubbery glory, better in my opinion than Doctor Who or The Outer Limits. Only wish there were more episodes, but it must have been really expensive.
Magellan (2017)
Flawed but thoughtful
To begin with, forget about the low-budget aspects. I've been bored to death by some big-budget blockbusters, at least this movie kept me wondering, and caring, what would happen. The astronaut and his wife were well acted to me, the rest were uneven but earnestly played. Yes, on the surface the plot looks like a retread of 2001, but the focus on human relationships makes it very different.
A significant problem was the mission director telling the astronaut that his wife had a breakdown (right before a planetfall, thanks boss), then never really resolving that. The filmmakers made the choice to show things only from the astronaut's POV (no "meanwhile back on earth"), which fits the claustrophobic yet isolated vibe, but we still needed to learn more about what was happening with her.
The conflict between the military and the scientists needed more development too. How we would react to the news of alien life--with fear or with curiosity--is shown here in the scientist's giddy excitement and then in the military takeover of the mission. Just needed more meat on the bones as to why they did it.
All in all, though, the film kept me interested, wondering, and sympathizing with the hero's dilemma. Though I would rather he went hone to his wife, I'm just a romantic at heart. The choice he makes at the end isn't for everyone but I had to respect it.
P.s. An astronaut named Nelson traveling through lonely space for years on end with only his two AI buddies for company... hmm....
Captain Nova (2021)
Fun, but flawed, but still fun little movie
Suspending disbelief for the sake of sci-fi is part of the deal. We invented antigravity and time travel by 2050 but couldn't do anything about global warming? Okay. Woman travels back in time and is physically transformed to the age she was then? Okay. But part of the deal is that we suspend disbelief about the science, not about how human beings interact with each other. An older farming couple encounters two kids on the run and decides to help them evade the police. Why? Just needed a little backstory to explain the motivation. The government UFO investigators seemed mostly unsurprised by all this. Why? Has it happened before? Do they actually know why the time traveler came and are trying to stop her? The story just needed some more development to make the characters' actions more believable. Overall it was a fun movie, though. The teen actors were likable heroes to root for, and I thought the young lady did a good job of portraying someone older trapped in the ridiculous situation of being a kid again. Bonus points for the overly talkative and somewhat psycopathic little robot that kept wanting to eliminate people, at least they didn't just make it cute.
Bigfoot (1967)
Iconic piece of film
If it was a hoax, it was sheer genius: the shaky camera work, running and stumbling, losing the subject and then finding it again, not to mention an incredibly good suit. We are used to these things from the "found footage" genre today, but I would be interested to know if there are examples of these techniques being used back then to create the illusion of an accidental encounter.
The Mothman of Point Pleasant (2017)
Not your typical monster story
The mothman story is already strange enough, with the rash of bizarre sightings leading up to a tragic bridge collapse. What Small Town Monsters adds to this well known story is a sense of the scope of the incident--the length of time it went on, the number of people involved, and the variety of unusual phenomena (especially the extensive UFO reports across the region). The film doesn't push you toward a conclusion, which I appreciate. But whether you think this was an alien, an ancient curse, or just hysteria over a mis-identified bird, something really weird happened there.
The Philadelphia Experiment (2012)
not bad for a SyFy original
Usually I watch SyFy original movies just for laughs, but this actually had some interesting plot points and decent acting in some of the major roles. The basic concept is sound: a top-secret project to create an invisibility cloak, building on the supposed 1940s Philadelphia Experiment with the destroyer USS Eldridge, actually creates a link between the two events, with increasingly catastrophic results. Instead of the star-crossed lovers of the 1980s movie, we have the 1940s Eldridge survivor (played rather well by Nicholas Lea) teaming up with his own granddaughter. Kind of sweet, and makes for an interesting scene when she meets him--she recognizes him from old family photographs, and here he is, sitting in her (his?) house. And not every time travel story has the guts to end with, "Okay, we fixed the timeline, so actually none of this ever happened and no one's the wiser."
The biggest plot issue: The government baddies who keep trying to kill people who could help them solve the problem. For crying out loud, once a destroyer has landed on top of the Sears Tower, it's a little late for a cover-up. It really seemed as though the evil-government-operatives angle was more an excuse to have chase scenes and explosions than anything else. There were also some interesting plot threads that were left hanging--Who was on the telephone, warning our heroes about the baddies? What was the "Ivory Gate" thing about? If Salinger thought the whole concept was a bad idea, why did he instigate a shadow project to parallel the government's research? Maybe there was more on these originally, but it got cut from the final edit because someone thought we needed more gunfire and explosions.
Not a great movie, but so much better than most of their original movies!