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barryhaworth-1
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Du xing yue qiu (2022)
Surprisingly enjoyable and moving
I am currently on holidays and decided to go to the movies. The only science fiction movie I could find currently screening was something called "Moon Man", a Chinese language movie billed as a science fiction comedy. This was about a man stranded on the moon when an emergency causes his colleagues to evacuate their moon base. That was about all I knew about it - that, and that it had done very well at the Chinese box office when it was released earlier this year. I almost didn't go, but am glad I did as I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. It was funny, and moving, and beautifully shot - the SFX and visuals and music were spectacular. It had periods of comedy, periods of groan-and-wait-it-out silliness (who brings a kangaroo to the moon?), and others of well thought out science fiction action. At times it had me laughing aloud, and it even managed to move me to tears at one spot. If I had to nit pick I would mention that they didn't make much of an attempt to simulate lunar gravity, and they had things like vehicles stirring up clouds of dust that hung in the (non-existent) air, but these are minor. The movie was subtitled and there were some signs which did not get translated, some of which looked like they were important to the plot.
There were not very many people in the session I went to (four or five, maybe) and there are not many sessions. Here in Australia it was being screened as part of an Asian film festival. I would recommend it very strongly to any science fiction fan - see it on the big screen if you get the opportunity.
Assassin 33 A.D. (2020)
My friend and I watched with a growing fascination
I recently had an interesting experience with a friend of mine. We watched a somewhat unusual movie.
My friend and I are both science fiction fans and have been getting together regularly to watch movies. We try to find movies that neither of us have seen, which is sometimes a challenge.
Enter Assassin 33 AD. I came across this movie on an online discussion, the consensus of which was that it was a bad, low budget movie made by a Christian studio - one review I came across described it as looking like a film class assignment at Oral Roberts University. The basic story line is, when researchers develop a time machine it is hijacked by Islamic terrorists hijack who want to go back in time and kill Jesus before the crucifixion in order to prevent the rise of Christianity, so the good guys have to stop them.
I produced the movie as my contribution to film night a couple of weeks ago, fully expecting (as sometimes happens) that we would give up after ten minutes and move on to something better. Instead we watched with a growing fascination. Yes, the budget was low. Yes, the acting was bad. Yes, the SFX were basic. Yes, it had an overt "faith based" emphasis that neither of us had much experience with. Nevertheless, we watched with growing enjoyment. Why?
First, for all its faults and shortcomings, the film makers seem to have made a genuine effort to make a decent science fiction story. They took some care to think through the sorts of temporal paradoxes that might result if people tried doing the types of things we saw in the movie. Second, they knew their way around the bible story and followed the main points of the narrative so that for me there were a lot of familiar moments - even if they took the form of "wait, are they going to do that? .. surely they won't do that .. they did that!" - though I had to explain these to my not so biblically educated friend. Both of us wanted to know what on earth they would come up with next, and though the ending felt a little flat it was a wild ride getting there.
The Terrornauts (1967)
Brings back memories of Saturday afternoons
This movie is one of my childhood memories. Our local TV station used to broadcast it semi-regularly and I recall seeing it several times as I was growing up. As a sci-fi nut I found the story intriguing, though full of holes and very obviously done on a limited budget.
What made me want to track the movie down was, some years later, reading the book on which the movie was based. The book is "The Wailing Asteroid" by Murray Leinster, written in 1960. Like the movie the book is somewhat dated, though I think the book has probably aged better. Nevertheless, I'd still like to track down a copy of the movie and revisit my childhood Saturday afternoons.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1997)
Watch an Eagle mutate into a Turkey before your eyes.
This movie starts off OK. The book it is based on is a classic, the design work is interesting, the special effects are pedestrian by today's standards but perfectly adequate. Then they started changing things in nonsensical ways. Extra plots and sub plots are added, Verne's original novel emphasising exploration is set aside in a convoluted story that involves revenge, father/son conflicts, bionic limbs, and an attempt to make all the fault lines on the planet go off at once.
I stuck through with it to the end, but I wish I hadn't. Avoid this one.