SF27 Recap

Just thoughts on the movies themselves here. Impressions on the event to follow. No added surprises -- Spidey wasn't mentioned at all, and an attempt to get the new Time Machine remake fell through; the SFX weren't finished. The Lightyears Trilogy didn't make the bill -- the shipper sent two prints of the French animated film Light Years, which thankfully did not get shown.



X-Men - Saw it before, enjoyed it then, enjoyed it this time. I like how they build the mythos for future characters -- Iceman, Jubilee, Kitty Pryde -- without them getting in the way. I'm glad actors are in place for the sequel, but I'm not the least bit interested in the Dark Phoenix saga -- the only thing worse in my mind is the Silver Surfer.



Iceman - No, not the guy from X-Men. Timothy Hutton and company thaw out a Neanderthal and he does not get a law degree. I was in the minority on this one in our group, and apparently in the larger group, judging from the comments on the SF27 message board (there are lots of complaints that there was not enough "pure sci-fi," which apparently means lasers and aliens -- the distinction between sci-fi and science fiction is now clear to me). I enjoyed it, thought John Lone's performance was excellent, and while it moved slowly and fell apart at the end, I found it interesting throughout. And this despite the apprearance of Lindsay Crouse. I'd give it a B-minus, up a full lettergrade from John. The one thing that made me roll my eyes was their incredibly well-equipped polar research facility, featuring a zoo-quality jungle exhibit and a fully-stocked (for 1984) arcade.



Omega Man - I saw this within the past year at Kristin's Movie Dictator Night. It still sucked. I was really hoping this would pop up later in the event. The source material, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, is still begging for a proper adaptation.



The Lost World -- what a treat this was. A gorgeous restored print (made possible in part by Hugh Hefner -- no joke!) with live piano accompaniment. Wallace Beery leads an expedition to the Amazon to rescue someone and follow up on his claims of dinosaurs. The special effects held up marvelously even if some of the onscreen humor did not: this being 1925, time was given to an offensive black stereotype (I think he was in blackface to boot). He was alongside an equally buffoonish Cockney character; I wonder if Brits today would find that as politically incorrect.



Happy Accidents -- the aforementioned messge boards were full of complaints when this booking was announced. What's this chick flick doing on the schedule? What's Marisa Tomei have to do with science fiction? Well, this turned out to be the surprise favorite of the day. Tomei plays an enabling codependent who meets a guy (Vincent D'Onofrio) who might break her streak of flaky romances-- until he claims to be from 400 years into the future. Performances were great, the logic in D'Onofrio's time-travel stories held up (or at least made as much sense as the psychobabble) and everyone was kept guessing until the end. At which point it got LOUD, sustained cheers.



These Are The Damned -- Seemingly four differerent films here, none of them as interesting as they may sound: A group of hoods, led by Oliver Reed, use Reed's sister as bait to rob unsuspecting tourists. They do this to American Macdonald Carey, but the sister falls for Carey. Fleeing Reed, they stumble on a government plot where radioactive children are being raised to survive a nuclear holocaust. Thrown into this is Viveca Lindfors, playing a flaky bohemian sculptor and obviously prepping for her role as a flaky bohemian professor in The Sure Thing. Interesting in its bleakness, but little else. The European version we were shown is 20-odd minutes longer than the US release. Not sure if we got the short end of that stick.



Wave Twisters -- the booker found this one due to its vague SF theme and good notices at South By Southwest, but apparently failed to realize that SXSW is as much a music event as a film festival. Wave Twisters was a long-form animated music video for an album by DJ QBert. Now, I rather enjoy DJ music when I'm doing something else, but concentrating on it alone, it gets old quickly. And so did Wave Twisters' visuals. Still, I only mildly disliked this, where others absolutely hated it.



Godzilla vs. Destroyer -- or "Destoroyah" as the opening credits said. It's not often film titles have a Boston accent. Godzilla films should be like AC/DC albums, or Scooby-Doo episodes: comfortingly familiar, with no prerequisites to worry about. This one brought in characters and situations from previous Godzilla films, when no Toho Godzilla efforts had come to the US between Godzilla 1985 and (the pretty decent) Godzilla 2000. It was also painfuly slow, especially for an action movie, and included a baby Godzilla. Haven't the Japanese learned from American TV? Babies ruin franchises! This one put me to sleep early on, but I woke up near the end.



Evolution -- I fully intended to sleep through this one, but I woke up maybe a quarter in, alarmed that I had dropped my glasses on the floor. Kirsti managed to recover them, but by then I was jarred awake, so I was stuck watching the rest of it. It wasn't the worst thing to see at 3 a.m.



Doctor X -- On the other hand, booking this in the wee morning hours was a bad idea. Its leisurely pace and my sleep deprivation meant that while I was up for all but the last five minutes of it, I can only remember that the technicolor was lovely and so was Fay Wray. This deserved better placement, perhaps swapped with Omega Man.



Creature with the Atom Brain -- I slept through nearly all of this. Someone reanimating corpses to get revenge on someone.



The Terminal Man -- disappointed in my lack of stamina during the last two films, I got up and watched much of this from the back of the theatre. Not that that was worth it. George Segal gets a computer implant in his brain to cure seizures. This being based on a Michael Crichton novel, it's padded with a lot of surgery/medical scenes and jargon which is supposed to impress us. But not much happens, and a lot of time is taken to show us nothing happening. Interesting paths, like Segal's belief that machines are taking over, are hinted at and dropped. The crowd turned on this one swiftly and brutally.



The Independent -- Not really sci-fi, but in the right spirit of things. Jerry Stiller plays Morty Fineman, a Cormanesque writer/producer/director of grade-Z exploitation films like 12 Angry Men and a Little Lady. I don't want to give much away here, but:catch it when you're able, and be sure to catch the list of Fineman's work during the end credits.