“Captain, we’re reaching crush depth!” “Blow all ballast, put us on the deck, Chief.”
Watching some movies is like riding a submarine into the deep. The pressure of outright bad threatens to crush the soul of the innocent viewer. Surface before you get too deep. For me, the hull implodes at 15 minutes after the start of First Frame. Well, 16, after I give it the one five.
I abandoned Kevin Costner’s disaster Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 in the second reel. It seemed to have started in the third reel. “Who are those people? What the hell is going on? Can’t you give the viewer at least a toehold?” were questions that leaped to mind. Christ, what an ego this guy has. An ego that cost him $40 million of his own money. What a chump. I will not hazard a look at Chapter 2. You shouldn’t either.
The Humanity Bureau with Nicholas Cage as a humanity bureaucrat (shot in Canada). The aims of King Donald and his Prime Minster Musk have reached their logical conclusion in the near future. The disabled and elderly who are no longer able to contribute to society are deported to the Orwellian named New Eden (read death camp, including a conveniently located crematorium nearby). Cage explains to the to be deported why it’s a good thing.
Not satisfied with making a remake of Soylent Green, the Canadians threw in a soap opera subplot. Nick Cage phones it in.
Life, with Jake Gyllenhaal and the luscious Rebecca Ferguson, borrows the plot from at least one episode of the original Outer Limits (“This is the Control Voice. There is nothing wrong with your television set.”) and god knows how many science fiction stories of the past 100 years, all based on the Pandora’s Box myth.
Jake and Becky plus three other victimizes-in-waiting open a robot capsule containing a soil sample scooped up on Mars and returned to the International Space Station. Despite viewers shouting “Don’t open that!” the soil is exposed to the dense warm atmosphere on the ISS and, as you might expect, becomes the Blob but without Steve McQueen to stop it. Its really the kind of thing you’d expect from teenagers in the 1950s, not smarty pants actors in the 21st Century.
Coogan’s Bluff, Clint Eastwood and director Don Siegel’s rehearsal for Dirty Harry a few years down the trail. I confess I saw this in the theater in 1968, but my experienced and jaded eyes viewed the story differently this time.
Clint plays a deputy sheriff who doesn’t play by the rules sent to New York City on a mission to escort a prisoner back to Arizona to get a taste of frontier justice. He must deal with some unintentionally comical liberal PC ideals in the form of the lovely Susan Clark. He gets the girl, at least until he leaves town I guess. Tisha Sterling takes LSD and acquires a little green worm in her head, breaking trail for RFKjr.
The Cosmic Man (1959) is a poor man’s remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still with John Carradine as Cosmic Man standing in for Klaatu. The whole silly snooze-fest plays out in Griffith Park. File Under: Why’d they bother?
In The 27th Day Gene Barry and a few other Earthlings are given the opportunity to destroy all life on Earth for the benefit of the Aliens who need a new human free home. They have to do it in 27 days or else. William Asher directs from a story by John Mantley before he discovered his talents were best employed in Westerns like Gunsmoke. Add them all up and that’s still 90 wasted minutes. Wikipedia provided facts not in evidence in the first fifteen.
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