Thinking back on it probably well over half of the movies I've watched in my youth were science fiction films. The problem with this is that sci fi is prone to cheesiness, ham-fistedness, and watering down. I've seen a lot of bad sci fi. A lot. Thankfully little of it made as much impression as these movies... which I still can't remember much of.
2001/2010
Big blocks of silence. My dad explains to me that there is no sound in space, and that this is the only movie that honors that fact. Dave is taking out HAL's mind, piece by piece. His voice gets slower and slower... Later there lots of light and color and then a small white room, and a crib. Later the obelisks scream, and Jupiter is compressed into a star, and a dim purple dawn is seen over a flourishing moon. I still can't distinguish the films.
Blade Runner
My mom hates this movie, and like everything she hates I don't ever see much of it. It's dark, what I remember, and Harrison Ford spends most of his time talking to himself. However, unlike 99% of all movies I've seen, it nearly made me cry. The tall, thin, ghostly, doomed replicants, the rain, the white birds.
Star Trek the Motion Picture
What sticks here is a sort of melancholy stateliness. The ageing crew is dwarfed by a big, harrowing universe that passes by like clouds moving almost imperceptibly against the blue. I was fascinated by the scenes of Spock moving into the structure surrounding V'ger, a slow march into the unknown, all light and metal.
Wrath of Khan
I actually don't know at what point the famous line is, nor do I know its context. I do know that at some point someone gets a really nasty grub in their ear and that Kirk doesn't really know much of anything about his own son. There's a really fantastic painted paradise and Ricardo Montalban in a chair commanding some people. The clearest part of this movie for me is the end, when the Genesis device is thrown onto a planet and Spock painstakingly repairs the core manually, then, pressing his poor radiation ravaged hand against the core's enclosure, dies.
Search for Spock
Some really uncomfortable moments on the Genesis planet with Kirsti Alley and a freshly regenerated Spock. Also more gross grubs that are too large to be put in anyone's ear.
Voyage Home
You have to love cable for providing some bargain basement fantastic camp, and all of the wacky people who thought this would be a good (profitable) idea. No money for sets? Use the old klingon ship and shove everyone back to San Francisco in 1985! But this is my favorite old crew Star Trek film just for that. Fish out of water tales (or whales back into water) work well with these old familiar faces, even if the result is thoroughly naff.
the Alien series is in with Horror.
July 7, 2009
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2 comments:
man, all the parts in the original Star Trek movie with them walking through those rib-shaped rocks creeps me out. When the come out of the ground and all, too dream like for me to handle.
I don't remember them being in the ground, but it's all definitely dream like. Like how everything is so richly painted, and slow...
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