If starfighter really is a trademarked term within the big pile of Star Wars IP, then I call trademark abuse upon whoever filed that trademark and malpractice on the part of whoever approved it.
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I often report on bizarre movies I’m not really recommending. Today I watched again a wild movie I do think is of unanticipatable benefit in anyone’s life – the sci-fi space vampire extravaganza Lifeforce (1985).
I suppose neither trailer is Safe For Work. You could choose to view the excellent, mounting terror abstract trailer:
or the more traditionally expositional trailer, which is still good:
Lifeforce was based on a largely philosophical 1970s novel, The Space Vampires, by my favourite philosophical writer Colin wilson. Wilson’s apocryphal comment about the film made from his book was, ‘at least there’s lots of gratuitous nudity.’ His ideas about willpower and mental faculties still come up in the film.
Lifeforce begins with the 80s frisson (my childhood) of space shuttle missions and the passing of Halley’s comet close to Earth.
A shuttle mission to study the comet finds an alien spacecraft in its tail. Three nude humanoids are suspended in crystal tubes inside. The crew decide to bring them back to Earth. The always nude vampires escape and begin draining humans, turning people into repulsive animated corpses which in turn need to drain other people or they’ll explode. The story’s also a distant spin on Dracula, with many bits from that novel (vampires travelling in their own soil, a stranger killing all the crew on a ship, mental links between vampires and victims induced by hypnosis) in evidence.
Almost every review of this film mentions ‘gratuitous nudity’. It seems justified to me. The vampires have no reason to cover up, in fact they are here explicitly to seduce people. This is especially true of their leader, the unbelievable-looking Space Girl played by Mathilda May.
Lifeforce never stops escalating with strange ideas and wild scenes which alternate sci-fi-thoughtful, shocking and silly. For instance, you can see Patrick Stewart’s possessed character, the director of an insane asylum, in a helicopter, spewing blood from most of his orifices, blood which congeals into a haemolysed duplicate of the Space Girl for communication purposes.
In spite of the production values, few of the actors or myriad tones ever seem to match. Situations and dialogue are weird and frequently uncomfortable. The Poltergeisty, animated corpse and life-draining effects are, even in cases where they don’t look real, impactful. The climax sees the possessed running amok in London in a kind of unintentionally funny mini-Romero film while lightning flies everywhere.
Cannon pulled in Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) to direct fresh off the back of Poltergeist. Lifeforce was the equal biggest-budget movie The Cannon Group every made: $25 million. Only two years later they were filing for bankruptcy, though not specifically because of Lifeforce only making $11 million.
Lifeforce is a somehow transcendent example of 80s big-budgetry getting out of control and producing something that could exist by no other pathway.
-Wade
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I just saw the thriller Heretic with Hugh Grant. I shall say words about it briefly without details or spoilers. The premise, as revealed by the trailer, is that two Mormon sisters stop to proselytise at the house of an apparently friendly man who previously expressed an interest in being proselytised to. In doing so, they enter a weird theological/game situation.
This is the trailer that I saw many times over months in the cinema before the film arrived:
Worth watching? Absolutely.
The nature of the film would seem to preclude it from making a lot of money, despite some hype that exists (I hear some internet buzz exists. My friend said its nature was so silly that he couldn’t even remember what it was in order to report it to me.). Or, it could ride on hype, make money, but not be broadly popular. Money of course, in the first place, only shows that people decided, or were convinced, to go to a film, not whether they liked it or not.
-Wade
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We just saw this today. It was fun to see Grant’s signature bumbling geniality turn into something sinister, and he was clearly having a ball with the role. But it wore thin for me after a while, just like it wore thin for me in his romantic lead roles. I enjoyed the movie but had problems with its premise. The talented Mr. Reed is picking on religion (by hunting the religious) as a tool of control. While I agree that religion in general is troubling for the way it exerts control over people, he isn’t exactly making a scintillating new argument. Anyone who has watched a theist and an atheist squabble fruitlessly online has seen all this before. It’s all just justification for kidnapping and torturing women, of course, but his arguments were pretty facile, and the plot goes wonky as the 2 girls prove to be more than a match for him in logic and intelligence. He’s just a psycho who thinks he’s smart, and I found him pretty pathetic in the end.
Worth watching? Yeah, for sure, despite my problems with it.
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Heretic spoilers, and reply to @AmandaB
Summary
Yeah. When he slowly delivered his reason (“control”) complete with great pauses in front that made you go ‘argh, tell me!’ – and it was this – there was a pffft sound from my brain as the air balloon-squeaked out. Whatever amazing denouement I hoped for, this wasn’t it.
As we know and have discussed here recently, it’s hard to produce a really satisfying outcome in this kind of film. And once again, one wasn’t produced.
However I did find this film made me vacillate on what could be going on, more frequently, and more in general, than any of late, which was what I enjoyed the most about it. I would also have been entirely happy if it had turned out he was a ‘we’re living in a sim’-driven freak.
The middle part of the film which gets more conventional thriller – people scrabbling for keys, trying to get out of a room, Reed having to answer the door repeatedly – was a pretty significant energy drop for me, but I felt buoyed again once that passed.
-Wade
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Yes, you’ve nailed why it was as enjoyable as it was-- you just didn’t know where it was going. Was he some ancient pagan satanist? Was he going off the deep end with the sim-world theory? Something you couldn’t even guess at because it was so weird?
So it was pretty sad and disappointing when it turned out he’s just another pitiful woman-hating control freak who reads religious texts so he can point out that they’re wack. Sigh.
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I am currently watching the anime series Pluto. I highly, highly recommend it. Really good sci-fi with kinda obvious political statements, but as a series it really works, is constantly moving forwards and never gets annoying. Highly recommend, and it’s definitely worth its 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I don’t say that often)…
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@SomeOne2 Pluto has been on my to-watch list for a while and the only thing I know is that Mike Pollock (Dr Eggman) does a voice.
I watched Kubo and the Two Strings the other night. The animation is great. Like a lot of reviewers, I often couldn’t distinguish its CGI from its stop motion puppetry. I think it’s safe to assume that the papercraft/origami animation was CGI, but otherwise, I can’t really say.
It also has a very moving plot about storytelling, memory, and transcendence and, unfortunately, not so great dialogue.
Sarcastic Main Characters
There are just three main characters throughout most of the movie, and two of them talk largely in sarcastic quips.
That got me thinking about how early CGI family movies (especially Toy Story, Ice Age, and Shrek) put characters that would normally serve as comic relief front and centre. It kind of made sense in those films because they featured odd couples who were forced to work together reluctantly by circumstance.
As CGI movies overtook traditional animation, it seemed like audiences kind of expected the same ironic tone from all CGI family movies. There’s arguably no reason for say, The Incredibles or How To Train Your Dragon to have main characters written in such a sarcastic way, but they are written that way.
Not that there’s anything wrong with it if you can get into the mindset. It’s just really noticeable in Kubo due to a very small main cast. There’s more to the two main characters then the movie tells us at first (ie. the magical surrogate parent figures really are the kid’s parents). The audience will probably figure that out ahead of time, and it’s a well-executed twist. But it doesn’t really justify the ironic tone throughout. It could, with a bit more writing to justify a tense relationship, but it doesn’t.
Strong Central Conflict
On the other hand, I was genuinely impressed with the writing of the villain and the central conflict. Some family movies might take a shot against cruel dogmatism and harsh rules, but usually that applies to a single overzealous mortal bad guy and his direct effects on the world. (eg. “Uncle Scar causes ecological catastrophe”). Edit: I realize the Lion King is based on Hamlet and I am probably underselling Scar here
Most movies would not try anything as complex Kubo, tackling the issue of how people actually engage with reality and how the imposition of laws impact that.
The way in which the villain is redeemed — by losing his memory and being told a pleasant story about himself — says a lot. (I criticized The Incredibles’ above but that movie was about as ambitious in this regard in the opposite way, as Syndrome was made into a villain by the hero.)
Anyway, given how heartwrenching Kubo wants to be overall, the tone kind of took me out of it. It’s still good, but I kind of wished it was made in a foreign language where irony isn’t such a big selling point and presented with subtitles.
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I saw a film so new it has no reviews on IMDB yet. Grafted, a New Zealand horror-comedy about a female Chinese student who eventually moves to join relatives in NZ in the wake of her father’s death by his own flesh-grafting experiments.
I have no idea what kind of distribution this will get. It feels like it could have a moment now if it’s lucky due to the success of The Substance. It’s outrageous-leaning and body horror.
The film moves fast into the preposterous, and doesn’t have a lot of nuance, but is very likeable and has a kind of 80s ballsiness. Somehow it reminded me of the spirit of films like Re-Animator or Return of the Living Dead III.
Trailer with swearing, blood, gore:
-Wade
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I watched The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More yesterday. I thought it was great. I’ve been in such a depressed funk lately that it’s hard to summon the willpower to care about watching movies or reading books or playing games, but this movie felt like… I was going to say a breath of fresh air, but it was more like just a breath of air, period, after weeks of suffocation.
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Which Eggman is this? I ask because I’ve literally lost count of how many times the English Sonic Voice Cast has been replaced.
The one since 2005 , assuming you count the games as him officially taking on the role. I think he’s the only cast member who wasn’t replaced across the two last cast changes.
He wasn’t in the recent Netflix series, which had a separate, standalone cast. And of course there’s Jim Carrey for the movies.
Wicked was great. John Chu’s superpower is he knows how to put the budget actually on-screen instead of having the movie built in a cubicle farm ten miles away.
I cannot wait to buy this movie on video so I can go frame by frame and just look at detail that’s packed into every shot.
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Anyone could help me to identify a Nordic or Scandinavian TV-series?
It was a comedy about a complete idiot.I only remember he was an asshole (and maybe he was bald and worn glasses), a little bit like Larry David in Curb, but more stupid. The series had a dry sense of humour. They did a film with the same characters. The protagonist and his wife or girlfriend discussed having a baby and, coincidentally, he had to take care of a boy. He made a big mess about it. Sorry for not being able to give more details. I think I discovered the UK version of The Office at that time, but I am not sure which date that could be, only that they did several seasons
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@bert1978
I’ve found ChatGPT to be unbelievably useful for identifying obscure things.
I just pasted in your whole post and it responded with…
It sounds like you’re referring to the Scandinavian TV series “Kopps” (2003), which was later adapted into a film. However, if you’re describing a different show with a more direct focus on a character who is an “idiot” with dry, awkward humor, I believe the series you’re thinking of is “Rikets Røst” (literally “The State’s Voice”), which aired in Norway around 2002. The show featured a main character who fit the description of being a bit of an idiot (similar to Larry David’s character, but arguably more inept), and the humor was often dry and awkward.
It’s not the only series from that period. There are others out there, but would you think “Kopps” is an ideaable for the same too…
…and then it hid your comment saying it violated their usage policies. However, you can further refine it’s suggestions (as if in conversation with it) and eventually you’ll have your answer.
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That’s the first case of useful LLM I’ve seen.
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Thank you, but it is not any of these. Kopps is a cop´s comedy and the other one was a program of sketches. I know I´m asking too much with a description so meager, but I cannot do better.
I tried using ChatGPT to find a show I’d seen on Netflix. It kept naming similar sounding titles which may or may not have been real, but it never did hit on the one I was looking for.
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Like I said, you have to have a conversation with ChatGPT to refine it’s suggestions.
Not to derail this topic, but ChatGPT is oblivious to recent events/data. Also, the way LLMs work, is basically an amalgamation of it’s training data. If very little content was consumed about certain things, you have to get very specific and unique to target the “knowledge” it has because it doesn’t understand anything it says.
I asked it about an obscure two-piece punk band once with a song called Hook, Line, and Sinker. I didn’t know much else. The tidbit that got it on the right path was that I said the cover of the album was predominantly blue. Holy shit balls. It zeroed in on the query and gave me the band name, album title, the full track list and release year. Google yielded nothing… even after I entered the exact name of the band and album that ChatGPT suggested. ChatGPT 1 - Google 0
I’m not saying it’s the second coming; it’s just incredibly useful if you understand its limitations and how to prompt it properly. I used to be able to pull useful sites with Google by omitting certain search words and putting quotes around chained words. As it sits now, Google is almost useless compared to its former glory.
I haven’t actually seen this, so probably not the right one: Klovn (TV Series 2005–2022) - IMDb
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